teaching, and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.' Which student do you think has more success in college? Think about this statement: You can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic intelligence. People who really agree with this statement have a more fixed-oriented mindset. People who really disagree with this statement have a more growth-oriented mindset, and, of course, people might be somewhere in the middle. It turns out that the more students disagree with statements like these, the more they have a growth mindset, the better they do in school. This is because students with a growth mindset approach school differently than students with a fixed mindset. They have different goals in school. The main goal for students with a fixed mindset is to show how smart they are or to hide how unintelligent they are. This makes sense if you think that intelligence is something you either have or you don't have. Students with a fixed mindset often will avoid asking questions when they don't understand something because they want to preserve the image that they are smart or hide that they're not smart. But the main goal for students with a growth mindset is to learn. This also makes a lot of sense. If you think that intelligence is something that you can develop, the way you develop your intelligence is by learning new things. So students with a growth mindset will ask questions when they don't understand something because that's how they'll learn. Similarly, students with a fixed mindset view effort negatively. They think, 'if I have to try, I must not be very smart at this.' Students with a growth mindset view effort as the way that you learn, the way that you get smarter. Where you'll really see a difference in students with fixed and growth mindsets is when they are faced with a challenge or setback. Students with a fixed mindset will give up because they think their setback means they're not smart, but students with a gro wth mindset actually like challenges. If they already knew how to do something, it wouldn't be an opportunity to learn, to develop their intelligence. Given that students with a growth mindset try harder in school, especially in the face of a challenge, it 's no surprise that they do better in school. Students with a growth mindset view mistakes as a challenge rather than a wall. Many students shy away from challenging schoolwork and get discouraged quickly when they make mistakes. These students are at a significant disadvantage in school - and in life more generally - because they end up avoiding the most difficult work and giving up when there are disappointments or significant challenges. Making mistakes is one of the most useful ways to learn. Our brains develop when we make a mistake and think about the mistake. This brain activity doesn't happen when we get the answers correct on the first try. What's wrong with easy? According to Dweck, 'it means you're not learning as much as you could. If it was easy, well, you probably already knew how to do it.'

### Activity 1: What's Your Mindset?

#### Checkpoint Exercises

This activity will assess whether you have a fixed mindset, a growth mindset, or some of both mindset types. Read each set of statements below. For each set, keep track of whether you agree more with statement A or statement B.

########## Set 1: