Glittering out again

"Something I discovered was a new love for myself."

-A Depot senior in her valedictorian speech 

Yesterday was our little graduation ceremony at the Depot. We call it "Senior Celebration." Every senior gets to give a short valedictorian speech, and hearing their accounts of their high school experiences was powerful.

They are a diverse bunch, but every one of them overcame tremendous challenges to get there yesterday. Challenges in their pasts led to challenges in their habits, dispositions, and support structures, which led to difficulties in school, which  snowballed until they were too big to handle. "When I first came to the Depot," said one senior, "I was pretty much ready to give up."

But to focus on these disadvantages would not do these young warriors justice. All of us have deficiencies and weaknesses, scars and wounds, hurts and hangups, failures and mistakes. We can all decide to focus on those, stew and fret over them, or accept them and focus on improving. We can lie down in defeat, or courageously move forward.

We can all view ourselves as a static, fixed, permanent set of weaknesses and  collection of failures and mistakes, or we can see ourselves as always growing and changing, dissolving and reforming, every moment as a new beginning.

We can all focus on judging ourselves for our weaknesses and failures, which actually hinders progress, or we can accept ourselves, which opens the door to progress.

We can tell ourselves a story about weakness and injury and victimization, or we can be the heroes of our story.


What defines these students is not their pasts. It's not their failings. It's their victories over these obstacles. They've gained a new openness to admitting they are wrong and asking for help, the courage to face their deepest fears and anxieties head-on,  and the resilience to bounce back from disappointments and failures. They've grown in self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-efficacy. They've set high goals and gained academic skills they never expected to master.

It's not the failures that define them, but the constant growth and renewal, and this is an ongoing process. As I wrote my little speech for them this week, it really hit me: though we aim to get them ready for college and career or whatever's next, we can't really prepare them. I don't think we're ever really ready for what life has in store for us. At least, I'm not. Life has a way of serving up challenges I never imagined, and I'm certainly not always "ready" for them. That's why I need to always be learning. That's why I'm always a beginner.

That's what I told them, and that's why I shared my favorite poem with them at the end--Struggle, by Sidney Lanier:

My soul is like the oar that momently
Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,
Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:
Each second I'm new-born from some new grave. 

When I finished, I said, "This is a new beginning for you all. May there be many more to come. I know there will be more struggles, but I know that every time you'll glitter out a again... and sweep the sea."

I caught one senior's eye as I said that last part. I swear her eyes glittered.

She will sweep the sea.

I hope they all will, again and again.

I hope we all will.

Well, that performance didn't go so well. Now what?

The guitar playing got progressively worse as the song went on. I could tell when I glanced out at the faces in the audience, which I couldn't do too much, because I had to focus so hard on my playing and singing, which was going downhill fast.

I knew what was happening. The adrenaline was kicking in, and the fight-or-flight response was draining the fine motor control from my fingers. I was powerless to stop it. I also knew it didn't sound too good, so later I felt this sense of failure. Even a desire to quit and not try it ever again.

Then I realized that was just my fixed mindset talking--the belief that abilities are fixed. The fixed mindset makes us want to avoid situations in which we might fail, because that would mean we're no good. It's especially powerful when we believe we are good at something, because then that belief is threatened by failure. It's what's behind the common belief that effort is bad, because it means you're not naturally smart or talented enough. It believes that success should be instant. And breeds a fear of failure.

The growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that success always requires effort, failure is a necessary part of the process, and growth is always possible.

While I have a growth mindset in some areas, I  have fixed mindset in others, like my singing. I guess maybe it's because I grew up being told how good I was at singing, and so it became a part of my identity, and I guess failure threatens that.
But it's time to approach musical performance like any other challenge: failure is just the by-product of pushing the envelope.

So bring it on.  I'll keep working on the self-accompaniment as long as there are folks patient enough to put up with my failures.

Come to think of it, that's a big part of my role as a teacher--to put up with my students failures, and not just to put up with them, but encourage them, because failures are necessary stepping stones to success.

Gattaca and the growth mindset

Nature vs. nurture.

Genetics vs. environment.


It's an age old (and tiresome) debate, recently re-framed by Carol Dweck: Fixed vs. growth mindset and, and depicted in a beautiful film called Gattaca.


I don't show a lot of movies in my classes--there aren't a lot of full length movies our there that are worth the class time, but I show Gattaca every time I teach biology.

It's not so much because of the questions it raises about genome sequencing (though those are interesting, timely and relevant questions). I show it mainly because I think it has an awesome and powerful message about living life.

For those of you who haven't seen it, Ethan Hawke plays a "God child"--a person conceived naturally, struggling to live in a world of people engineered for genetic perfection. His world believes that genes are destiny, but he sets out to prove them wrong--that genes are only part of the story, and that the limitations they place on us can be overcome.

And isn't this part of what makes us human? Overcoming limitations, pushing back boundaries?

That's why we watch it. And after we watch it, I ask my students to answer the question: Do our genes determine our destiny? It's a question that gets to the heart of education and growth in general. It's a message about growth mindsets and grit. It's a message I want my students to get loud and clear. I'm not sure there are any lessons more important: "There's no gene for the human spirit "

When Irene (played by Uma Thurman) finds out Vincent, through hard work and perseverance and has bypassed the discriminatory system and become an astronaut despite his flawed genetics, she says: "It's not possible."

Vincent replies, "You are the authority on what is not possible, aren't you Irene? They've got you looking for any flaw, that after a while that's all you see. For what it's worth, I'm here to tell you that it is possible. It is possible."

What's possible for you? For me? For our students?

What's holding us back, but our mindsets?