Cash Clifton: So welcome to everybody, and thank you for joining us to talk about getting gritty. So I'm coming to you from New Mexico as part of the COVID-19 series of webinars through OTAN. And we are in a really different time right now.

So I really do appreciate you being here. What I'm going to be showing you today are some lessons that I've been using in my face-to-face classes with a lot of success for years. So these are activities that my students say they really enjoy. And I am now in the process of transitioning to using these activities all online.

So I would like to ask you to take a moment and make sure you have something to write with and something to write on to do some reflection. So using some of Sharon Bowman's research from training from the back of the room, I really want to encourage you to use good old-fashioned pen and pencil rather than an electronic device. This is based on research that you use different parts of your brain when you're actually physically using a pen or pencil on paper.

So please take a moment to get something to write with and write on. As we go through today's webinar, I'm going to ask that you participate from the perspective of reflecting on your own experiences with grit and reflecting on your own mindset, as opposed to thinking about how you use these things with students.

I'll be showing you some technology tools and how you can use that part with students. But as we watch the videos, as I ask reflection questions, I would like to request that you please reflect on your own. I am coming to this webinar from the perspective of showing you tools that you can use for free.

So all of these tools that I'm using I used with a free account. So there's no extra add-on or pay anything in the tools that I'm using. Now, a lot of these tools when you sign up they'll say, you can have the free version. But then they'll have the bronze and the silver and the platinum versions. And some of those extra for pay features look really cool. And they might be worth it.

But just be aware that today everything that I'm showing you can be done with free internet resources. There's a lot of really cool stuff for free. So we're looking at grit. We're looking at growth mindset. And I want to start with Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

So I'm assuming you're all at least somewhat familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But I would like to introduce you to Maslow's hierarchy of needs teacher addition. Not my joke. I'm not nearly clever enough to come up with a joke like this.

This is from a training from the back of the room training. But this idea that teachers really, really like to lecture. And sometimes I think we're conditioned that if we're not lecturing, we're teaching. So I'm coming at this webinar more from the perspective of how can we use technology tools for hands-on learning, for project-based learning in ways where we're the learners or active listeners not passive learners.

So here's the first meme that I have for you and the second meme. 12 minutes in and we already have a tech glitch. So this is what I was describing as the teacher edition of Maslow's hierarchy of need-- throwing, again, not my joke, throwing that need to lecture down there as one of our basic needs. And so we're going to be looking at things we can do today other than just lecturing.

So we're going to start out with a technology that's not too terribly advanced. I'm imagining you're probably at least a little familiar with YouTube. I recommend having a Google account, so a Gmail account if you're going to use YouTube with your students. But some things I like about YouTube is I like that I can record a video lecture of myself.

So maybe I record it with Google Meet maybe I record it with GoToMeeting. Maybe record it with Zoom. There's Screencast-O-Matic. There's all these different ways to record. But then to share the recording with my students, I really like to go through YouTube. Because it just seems to be compatible with all devices. Whether it's a phone, tablet, anything like that, it's very, very compatible.

And then there's lots and lots of free of really-- lots and lots of really cool open and free videos. And so I want to start with a video that I bet a lot of you have seen before. We have a recommendation in the Q&A for Angela Duckwort's Grit-- Grit, the Power and Passion of Perseverance. So here's a little introduction to grit from Angela Duckworth.

[music playing]

Angela Duckworth: When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding-- teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests.

I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades. What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well.

And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard-- ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible. And I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.

After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ.

But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily? So I left the classroom. And I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings. And in every study, my question was, who is successful here and why?

My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year? And of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students?

We partnered with private companies asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who is going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health. And it wasn't IQ.

It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years and working really hard to make that future a reality.

Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint. A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago Public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate.

Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate. Even when I matched them on every characteristic, I could measure-- things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school.

So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out. To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows about building it. Every day parents and teachers ask me, how do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?

The honest answer is, I don't know. What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.

So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called growth mindset. This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck. And it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail. Because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks. Because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful. And we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned. In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier. Thank you.

[applause]

Cash Clifton: So if you're not familiar with Angela Duckworth's work, I just think she's absolutely phenomenal. And I highly, highly recommend her book, Grit as I said earlier. And it is this big question of how do we teach students grit? Can we even teach students grit? So based on what she says in this video, we're going to take a deeper dive today into growth mindset.

So moving forward with technology, the second technology we're going to explore today is Google Forms. So again, this is a free technology. You just need a Gmail to use this. And so some reasons that I like to use Google Forms is you can create self-creating quizzes. So that's just a luxury as a teacher to have things that grade automatically.

Now, I've found that when I use these technology tools, there's a lot of set up on the front end. So for example, when I build a form and I create this self-grading quiz, that takes a while. It can take an hour or more to create a really good self-grading quiz.

But the key, I think, is to have a very organized cloud somewhere. So whether that's Google Drive or something with an Apple product or something like that, then you can reuse these things over and over. So it's a lot of work on the front end. But if you're going to be teaching these concepts with different classes over the years, then you set these things up. And it will save you a lot of time in the long run.

You can also do quick surveys. You can see where your students are at, check understanding, see what do they want to learn, preferences, things like that. And Google Forms is really nice. Because it gives you the ability to export data to a spreadsheet.

So everything that students answer, you get a nice little chart and graph which I'll show you shortly. And you can also export to a spreadsheet so you can see a couple of different ways. So I'm going to ask you to go take the grit questionnaire that Angela Duckworth referenced.

So I just put a direct link to the Google Form we're using today in the chat if you would like to click on it. Or you're more than welcome to go ahead and type this URL in right here. And I'm going to give you just a couple of minutes to take the questionnaire and reflect on your results.

By the way, your responses will be anonymous. So I'm not collecting your name. Notice those responses come in how the graphs are continuing to change in real time. So I can really get an idea of where my students are at. And as you can see, I can scroll over and see more.

This one looks like it's kind of skewed to the left as we get further on down here. Whereas I see this one is very much skewed right. So lots and lots of great data in there. And you can see here we've had 30 responses. I don't know if you've noticed or not that all of this is changing.

So there's the summary. I can also see the original questions. So there's the original questions. And then I can also see what individuals put. So, again, this is anonymous. For example, the student right here, I can see that this is their response. And then notice right here, I can also export this to a spreadsheet.

I'm going to click on that. It's going to give me the option to create a new spreadsheet. And then now, I have this nice spreadsheet that's going to give me information about my students.

If I was using this with an actual class, I would have asked for their names so that I knew who responds what. But I decided to leave this anonymous for our purposes here. And notice how I get this nice little time stamp so I can see when people are responding. So this is a nice way to track student participation, student work. And then I can see what individual students put going along there. So that is a Google Form.

Now, you did get a response at the end of it that I'm not actually going to scale and score your grit score. If you are curious about how gritty you are after the webinar, what I recommend you do is just Google the grit scale 17 item. And you can get a link to actually tally the results and see what your grit score is.

And that is something I like to do with students is to have them calculate their grit score. And I don't have it necessarily set up as a self-grading quiz. So keep in mind in Form, students could do this as a self-grading quiz. This is an opportunity for me also to teach students math by having them score their own quiz. So food for thought on all that.

And I'm not seeing any questions about Google Forms at this point. So I'm going to assume that it is making sense. So again, that was Google Forms using it to teach the grit questionnaire and generate data from my classes.

So Angela Duckworth talks about a growth mindset. Then the question becomes, what is a growth mindset? So according to Carol Dweck who is, in my opinion, the leading expert on growth mindset. She's done a lot of work at Stanford. This is her definition.

So I'll give you a moment to read that to yourself. Here is the definition of a fixed mindset. Give you a moment to read that to yourself. And some people say there's also a third mindset. So for today's webinar, we're going to be looking at the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

Some people say the progression goes from fixed to growth to this idea of a benefit mindset. So growth mindset is belief in yourself and your own abilities and your ability to grow. Whereas benefit mindset becomes a belief in yourself and your abilities to benefit society and to change the world around you.

So just be aware some people do say there's a third mindset-- again, benefit mindset. But for the sake of time, we won't be going into that today.

So YouTube videos are great. Ted Talks are great. But maybe I'm a little paranoid. But there's the big question of, did my students actually watch the video? And sometimes based on the questions I get, it's very obvious my students didn't watch the video at times. And so the next tool I'd like to introduce you to is a tool called EdPuzzle.

So EdPuzzle is a way that you can actually confirm whether or not your students watch the video. So you can take a YouTube video and insert questions into the video. They can be multiple choice questions. They can be short response questions.

But this is a way to make sure they watch the video. It's a way to make sure that they actually understand the content, that they're actually thinking about the content. And it's a great way to prompt reflection writing.

So in a real class, I would have my students go log into EdPuzzle and actually work through so that they have to answer the questions as they go. For the sake of time because I don't think we can get all 68 of you into a class in a reasonable time, I'm just going to demonstrate EdPuzzle.

So here's my EdPuzzle video. This is a Ted Talk by Carol Dweck. And notice that this is just a regular YouTube video. So I brought this in from YouTube. But you're going to see at this little mark down here, and at this little mark down here, I have a couple of questions.

Over here on to do list, you see I have a question at one minute and 11 seconds. And then I have a question at four minutes and 45 seconds. So as I show this video to students, they're going to need to answer the questions. And that way I can confirm that they actually watched the video. So again, we're doing a demonstration here.

[applause]

Carol Dweck: Today, I want to tell you about the power of yet. I learned of a high school in Chicago where students had to pass 84 units to graduate, and if they didn't pass, they got the grade not yet. I thought, isn't that wonderful? Because if you fail, you're nowhere.

But if you get the grade not yet, you're on a learning curve. Not yet gave them a path into the future. And not yet also helped me understand a critical experience early in my career. To figure out how kids cope with challenge, I gave 10-year-olds some problems that were a little too difficult for them.

Some of them reacted in a shockingly positive way. They said things like, I love a challenge, or I was hoping this would be informative.

Cash Clifton: So keep in mind we're not watching this through YouTube. We're watching this through EdPuzzle. So we hit that one minute and 11 second mark. And the student needs to answer this to be able to go forward.

So see hear how the student can rewatch. So it's going to back up and go through that one minute and 11 seconds again. Or the student can skip. And that's going to let me know they aren't really paying attention. So that would raise a red flag for me to tell my students something. And notice, I can't just hit Submit. I have to type something to actually be able to submit.

So this is an example of an open-ended question. And I'd want to know, do my students embrace challenge? What's your initial reaction when something seems difficult? And so what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to prompt some metacognition. I'm trying to get students thinking about their thinking.

For the sake of moving ahead on time, I'm just going to type something in here. Again, if my student really did this, I would be concerned. I would have a follow-up conversation with them. But now that I've typed something, I can submit and continue with the video.

Carol Dweck: They understood that their abilities could grow through their hard work. They had what I call a growth mindset. But other children, for them, it was tragic, catastrophic. From their more fixed mindset perspective, their core intelligence had been tested and devastated.

Instead of the power of yet, they were gripped by the tyranny of now. So what did they do next? In one study after a failure on a test, they said they'd cheat next time instead of studying more. In another study, they found someone who did worse than they did so they could feel better.

And in many studies, we found they run from difficulty. Let's look at how that looks in the brain. Moser and his colleagues measured from the brain as kids encountered errors. Processing the error shows up in red. If you look at the fixed mindset brain on the left, nothing is happening.

But if you look at the growth mindset brain on the right, it's on fire with yet. They're processing the error deeply, learning from it and correcting it. So how are we raising our kids?

Are we raising them for now or for yet? Are they focused on the next A or test score instead of dreaming big, instead of thinking about what they want to be and how they want to contribute to society?

And if they are too focused on A's and test scores, are they going to carry this with them into the future? Maybe. Because many employers are coming to me and saying, we've already created a generation of young workers who can't get through the day without an award.

So what can we do? How can we build that bridge to yet? First, we can praise wisely. Our research shows that when we praise kids for the process they engage in-- their hard work, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance-- they learn that challenge thinking. They learn that resilience. Praising talent, praising intelligence makes them vulnerable.

There are other ways of rewarding yet. We teamed up with game scientists at the University of Washington to create a math game, Brain Points. The typical math game rewards right answers right now. But not Brain Points.

We rewarded process and the learning curve-- so effort, strategy, and progress. The Brain Points game created more sustained learning and greater perseverance than the standard game. And just the words, yet and not yet, after a student has a setback, we're finding creates greater confidence and greater persistence.

Cash Clifton: So here's the next question I insert for my students, again, to ensure they're watching the video. And this is the point where I want them to reflect. So I'm going to ask for you to take out whatever you have to write with and whatever you have to write on. And just take a couple of minutes to reflect.

So, again, think about yourself not necessarily your students. Can you remember a time when you struggled and someone encouraged you not to give up and how did that make you feel?

So here, again, the student can rewatch. they can skip. Or they can submit. So I'm going to go ahead and submit my answer. And now I can continue the video.

Carol Dweck: We also can change students' mindsets directly. In one study, we taught students that every time they pushed out of their comfort zone to learn something really, really hard and they stuck to it, the neurons in their brain could form new stronger connections. And over time, they could become smarter.

Those who learned this lesson showed a sharp increase in their grades. Those who did not showed a decrease. We have done this with thousands of students now across the country with similar results, especially for struggling students. So let's talk about equality.

In our country, there are groups of kids who chronically show poor performance. And many people think that's inevitable. But when educators create a growth mindset environments steeped in yet, equality can happen. Let me just give you a few small examples.

One teacher took her Harlem kindergarten class, many of whom could not hold a pencil for the first month through daily tantrums, she took them to the 95th percentile on the National achievement test. That same teacher took a fourth grade class in the South Bronx way behind, she took them to the top of New York State on the state math test. That teacher was a Stanford grad. And she's here today.

[applause]

And another Stanford grad, a PhD student Stephanie Fryberg, now a professor, went back to her Native American reservation in the state of Washington. She transformed the elementary school in terms of the growth mindset. That school had always been at the bottom of the district, at the bottom of the state. Within a year to a year and a half, the kindergartners and first graders were at the top of the district in reading and reading readiness.

That district contained affluent sections of Seattle. So the reservation kids outdid the Microsoft kids. And they did it because learning a growth mindset transformed the meaning of effort and difficulty. It used to mean they were dumb. And now it means they had a chance to get smarter. Difficulty [audio out] not yet.

Last year, I got a letter from a 13-year-old boy. He said, dear, Professor Dweck, I read your book already. I like the fact that it was based on sound scientific research.

That's why I decided to test out your growth mindset principles in three areas of my life. As a result, I'm earning higher grades. I have a better relationship with my parents. I have a better relationship with the other kids at school. I realized I've wasted most of my life.

Let's not waste any more lives. Because the more we know that basic human abilities can be grown, the more it becomes a basic human right for kids-- all kids, all adults to live in environments that create that growth to live in environments filled overflowing with yet. Thank you.

Cash Clifton: So that was Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck. And Steven asked a really good question in the chat about, well, if students can see where the questions are, could they just fast forward to that? And they absolutely could. And so if you are concerned about that kind of thing, I recommend writing the questions in a way that confirm understanding.

So maybe have a multiple choice test of, what is the definition of growth mindset? And have A, B, C, or D. So just be aware that that's a possibility. And then I see Jennifer adding, not unless the skip questions which you can set or not. And you said, I really recommend EdPuzzle's tech development modules to modify the variables and questions. So thank you for that feedback.

I want to show you how I would set this up a little bit. So let's say I want to pick a video. So let's see. I'm going to go to YouTube. And I'm going to choose a video with Carol Dweck. Let's see. This is a good video. I've seen this one before. And I might want to go in here and insert some questions.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to edit the video. And then I can come over here to questions. So let's say I want to insert a question here at a minute and 35 seconds. Then I could insert a multiple choice question and say this is a question to verify understanding. And then I can have the correct answer, the incorrect answer. And then I can add additional incorrect answers if I would want to. Save and then Finish.

And then now I have a video that I could assign. So I would assign this through air EdPuzzle here. Or the way I set this up in our slide show is I used a link. So you will receive a copy of the slide show I'm using today. And it does contain a link to the video.

So that is our EdPuzzle tool. And then there is going to be the link. So I talk to my students about growth mindset. I talk to my students about study habits and this idea of don't just sit and study, and study, and study. As you're sitting, you're restricting your blood flow. That means less oxygen flowing to the brain.

So I like to select some upbeat songs for students. And I ask them to get up and move around for a couple of minutes to get more oxygen flowing to their brain. So I do a lot of disco songs, Earth, Wind, and Fire, stuff like that-- old Michael Jackson songs.

And what happens in almost every class is students end up suggesting music. And I think that's awesome. So I'll let my students pick the songs for our little two-minute stretch breaks. If you do let your students select the song, a word of caution that I have unfortunately learned the hard way is that you should listen to the songs first. Because there is definitely some music with interesting lyrics out there.

So that was our half-time brain stretch. So I'd like to move on with our next technology. So we're halfway through. So the fourth technology that I'm going to be introducing you to is called Quizlet. And this is a free tool that allows you to create online flashcards. It lets you bring some game theory and gamify your class a little bit.

And it also introduces some friendly competition. I say hopefully friendly competition as you are teaching online, I hope you all follow a best practice and have some kind of netiquette policy from the beginning. That's just really important to establish what is OK in terms of communication and what is not.

And I chose the avatar on this one with the sunglasses. Because this is something that my students really like. And they tend to think, I guess, cool and hip, because I introduce a little bit of a game to the classroom.

So I'm going to ask for you to play the growth mindset match game that I've put together. And I will copy and paste this into the chat so that you can click on it directly. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes to go play the game. And I'm going to ask for you to play the match game.

So this is competition. See how quickly you can match growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And note, you can play the game without an account. However, I believe after you've played the game two or three times, it will lock you out if you don't have an account. So I'm going to play my own game. Let's see how I can do. So I want to make everything disappear.

Notice, I'm also teaching vocabulary. I got an easy one. Are they all growth? Let's see. That's going to be fixed. And I got 24 seconds. So as you can see, people have played this before.

So we're all trying to knock out Jervis. So, again, that's Quizlet. That is the free version of Quizlet that I was using. So what I would do with students is give them the definition of growth mindset like I did you. Go through the video with them, through EdPuzzle. And then have them play this game to verify understanding. And I'm excited to see other people have used Quizlet before. I love seeing other techie people.

So another video-- So this overarching question of how do you teach someone a growth mindset if someone has a fixed mindset, how do you move them towards a growth mindset?

And something that we've spent a fair bit of time debating in New Mexico is what you call this? Is it teaching a growth mindset? And we came up with the terminology of disrupting a fixed mindset. So this is the idea of disrupting a fixed mindset.

Speaker: Not so long ago, many scientists believed that the brain did not change after childhood, that it was hardwired and fixed by the time we became adults. But recent advances in only the last decade now tell us that this is simply not true.

The brain can and does change throughout our lives. It is adaptable like plastic, hence neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity. How does neuroplasticity work? If you think of your brain as a dynamic, connected power grid there are billions of pathways or roads lighting up every time you think, feel, or do something.

Some of these roads are well-traveled. These are our habits, our established ways of thinking, feeling and doing. Every time we think in a certain way, practice a particular task, or feel a specific emotion, we strengthen this road.

It becomes easier for our brains to travel this pathway. Say we think about something differently, learn a new task, or choose a different emotion, we start carving out a new road. If we keep traveling that road, our brains begin to use his pathway more. And this new way of thinking, feeling, or doing becomes second nature.

The old pathway gets used less and less and weakens. This process of rewiring your brain by forming new connections and weakening old ones is neuroplasticity in action. The good news is that we all have the ability to learn and change by rewiring our brains.

If you have ever changed a bad habit or thought about something differently, you have carved a new pathway in your brain and experienced neuroplasticity first-hand. With repeated and directed attention towards your desired change, you can rewire your brain.

[music playing]

Cash Clifton: So this is another video that I like to use with students and introduce them to this idea of neuroplasticity. And so I show them a video. And, Steven, this goes back to your question in a way. And I want to know did they watch the video. But I also want to know did they understand the video.

So one tool I can use to check for understanding is Kahoot. Sometimes, this can be used as a way to introduce some friendly competition as well. And this is also a way to track participation and document attendance. So that's another advantage of technology tools to document all that.

So we're going to try the Kahoot for OTAN webinar today. So you can either type in this TinyURL into a new tab. Or you can click or copy and paste from the chat. There's our generic Jeopardy. So kahoot.it. And then use the game pin on your screen here.

So three questions-- are you ready? True or false-- select your answer. It is false. So 11 people got the correct answer. Six people got the incorrect answer. So the brain can no longer adapt and change once we reach a certain age. It is considered to be false from the idea of neuroplasticity.

Now, that said, that's glossing over things like Alzheimer's and dementia. So this is a much, much deeper discussion. But based on what we just saw in the video, that would be false. Time for our next question. Oh, excuse me. There's a scoreboard. So Will-I-Am is our leader. OK, next question.

You have 30 seconds for this question. Looks like seven people got the correct answer of neuroplasticity. My brain really wanted this to be neuroelasticity. So honestly, I probably would have chosen the blue answer if I was taking this. Four people said growth mindset. So growth mindset, that's the idea of believing in your ability to change. So that's a cognitive process.

However, this would be talking about the actual, physical things going on in brain. And one person said the advantage of youth. I think there probably are some advantages to youth. And looks like the unknown nickname in me3 are in the lead.

So time for our final question. True or false-- we all have the ability to learn and change by rewiring our brains. There's our time. Looks like we all got that one. Let's see our podium. Bryan B is in third. Me3 came in second. And nickname, yay, whoever nickname is.

So I really like Kahoot. I think it's a lot of fun. I just like the graphics. It's just happy. I use this in face-to-face classes to check for understanding, to see if people are actually paying attention. And so this is what you'll see within Kahoot.

So you can upgrade. In my opinion, there are more-- I don't know if assertive or aggressive is the right word about pushing you to upgrade. But understand, you can do a lot with the free account.

So if I wanted to use this, I would just create. So I'm going to create a new Kahoot. And I could say, let's see, what color is the sky? I guess I'm not feeling terribly creative right now. And so I might say pink, which sometimes the sky is pink in New Mexico.

Orange-- sometimes the sky is orange. You guys have really pretty sunsets in California too. I'm going to say the sky is blue or gray. And the answer I'm looking for is blue.

So I would check here to make sure it is blue. And then I can preview it to see what it will look like. So see this will be the little countdown and everything. And then I will exit the preview. I could add additional questions if I wanted to. I could import videos. I can import slide shows.

There's a lot of stuff you could put in here. One thing to be mindful of is be sure and title this. So I'm going to call this Demonstration for OTAN Webinar, so that later I don't see this and go, what the heck is that?

By the way, notice in the settings here, down here, is where I could have a YouTube video in the lobby. So maybe I want students to watch a video in the lobby. Or maybe I just want to have some fun dance music or something. And then I can click Done.

And now it is ready to be done. So I could test it. I could play it now or I could share it with others. And so this is how I shared it with you guys is through copying here. Now, I copy that to my clipboard. And this is a mile long, this link 4AFE-... I don't really expect my students to type that.

And so if you notice, I've using tinyurl.com. There's other things. There's Bitly and all that. I could just take this big, long, ugly link and paste it in. So there's that big, horrible thing. And then I can make it tinyurl.com/ and then I can pick whatever I want it to be. I just have to make sure it's something that hasn't been used before.

So I don't know-- C for Cash Clifton, OTAN mindset. And then make TinyURL. And thankfully, I chose something that hasn't been used before. So now I have this TinyURL that's a lot easier for students to work with that created a direct link.

So understand TinyURL world does work with any website. And you probably know other ways of doing that kind of thing. So, again, that was the Kahoot tool.

So what do I actually discuss with my students during class? So some topics I like to talk about is the distinction between stress. So that's a good stress. That's productive stress. That's motivating stress. A little bit of stress, a reasonable amount of stress, that can motivate us as opposed to distress. That's the bad stress. That's the stress that doesn't motivate you, that wants you to give up or shut down.

I talk to my students about the productive struggle. Sometimes students see struggle as a bad thing. Whereas I tell them no, struggle can be OK in the context of growth as long as it's a struggle that you're gaining from or you have the potential to gain from. That's a productive struggle. And I'd like to introduce these terms to my students. Because then they have words to describe what they're experiencing later in the class.

So I introduce these very early. Towards the middle of the semester, I introduce the concept of imposter syndrome. So I might just find a little video. I might find a little article and this idea of faking it until you make it. And usually, students react to the idea of imposter syndrome by finding out that there's a lot of common ground, that, oh, wow. I'm not the only person who feels that way.

And then as I mentioned earlier I also like to talk about the idea of benefit mindset, which goes beyond just growth mindset. And then going beyond that even, Howard Gardner-- so if you recognize the name Howard Gardner, he came out with the theories of multiple intelligences in, I believe, the 1970s.

And he's come out with some more recent research where he talks about it's not enough to teach people to be gritty. We need to teach them to be gritty in a way that has integrity and that can support societal change.

So I also talk to my students about the idea of grit with integrity. If you want a great read on integrity, I suggest John Wooden's A Lifetime of Observations On and Off the Court. I'm not really a sports fan. But I really, really love the book and the message behind it. So I'll give you a moment to read this to yourself.

So I consider that a very, very powerful statement. I don't know that there's really much of anything I need to add to that. So how so continue with this theme of disrupting a fixed mindset? How do you disrupt a fixed mindset?

And from what I've read and from what I've experienced and from surveying my students about learning about these concepts in the class, what signs are pointing to is this concept of active listening and metacognition. So if a student is struggling, I might ask them, what can you learn from this?

Or if they tell me about a time when they struggle, I ask them what did you learn from this? I believe in being very strength-based and believing that the student is creative, resourceful, and whole. If you're taken some coaching courses before, you might recognize that and talk about what have you done to be successful in the past.

So I primarily teach math. And there's this stereotype that you're either an art person or you're a math person. And I just don't think that's true at all. I identify as both an art and a math person.

So an example of this would be if I get an art student who is good at everything, but math. I might say, what do you do to be successful in, say, you're a sociology class? And what would it look like if you applied those same strategies to math class? And that can be a very powerful conversations.

Action planning-- so what can you do to succeed? So notice, I'm not coming in as the expert and saying, I have all of the answers for your success. I'm asking the students to reflect on that. What mistake did you make that taught you something? Very, very important in math. I tend to think that's important in all subjects.

What resources did you use? So, again, we're viewing students as creative, resourceful and whole, what resources did they know about? What resources did they engage in? And I will suggest resources, things like Khan Academy. There are lots and lots of good things out there.

Where can you get constructive feedback? And that also opens the door to discussing what is constructive feedback? The feedback from a teacher, hopefully, isn't just there to make you feel bad. It's there to help the student grow. So there's that connection to growth mindset again.

How will you approach challenges along the way? So this idea of telling students that there will be challenges, don't be shocked when there are challenges. But what are you going to do when you run into a challenge?

If you had a plan to be successful at, let's say, math class, what might that plan look like? Good reflection at the end of class-- what did you learn today? Pointing out students' inner critic-- so sometimes we have voices in our head that kind of doubt ourselves. And I want to be clear. I'm not telling you to be counselors. Because we're not counselors. We're teachers.

But to point out, hey, are you in this habit of telling yourself that you're going to fail-- and pointing that out to students. And then if they start having that inner critic, what are they going to do? How are they going to counter that inner critic?

Again, it comes down to an action plan for a growth mindset and action plan for grit. Is your current learning strategy working? And if it's not, what would they like to change? There's that metacognition again, get them thinking about how they study.

And then what did you try hard at today? So, again, there's that very strength-based approach. And I'm glad to see this applies to classes beyond just math and the chats here.

And what habits do you want to develop to continue the gains you've achieved? And how will you do that? So sometimes, it's really easy to make a change at first. You have some adrenaline. You have that extra energy. Because it's something novel.

And then talking to students about, OK. If you've made these changes, how can you turn this into habit so that it's not temporary? So all just conversations that I try to have with my students. Sometimes, I'll have them do this as a journal. Sometimes, I'll ask students to sit for a couple of minutes and just reflect on their own like I did with you today.

Sometimes, these are just casual conversations that happen over Zoom during my office hours. So, again, I'm really trying to focus my students on metacognition. And I'm trying to practice active listening rather than trying to be the expert in the room with all the answers.

So a quick summary-- if we're looking at research in terms of what works and what doesn't, judgment doesn't typically help. And I think we often think of judgment in terms of a bad thing like I judge you for being less than me. But cheerleading can also be judgment. So keep in mind what Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth talked about about being cautious with your praise. And don't overpraise. Don't just be a cheerleader.