A Harlem Kindergarten That Could Not Hold Pencils Scored in the Top 5 Percent Nationally

For the first month of school, many of the children in a Harlem kindergarten classroom could not even hold a pencil.

When work got hard, they cried, shouted, and threw tantrums, and they did it every day.

By the end of the year, that class scored among the top 5 percent in the country on a national achievement exam. The account comes from Carol Dweck, a researcher who studies how children respond to challenge and failure, who says such results show what can happen in a growth mindset classroom.

In Dweck's account, one teacher led that Harlem class. She built an environment "steeped in 'yet,'" Dweck said, where ability was treated as something that grows when children push past comfort, stick with something very hard, and form stronger connections in the brain.

Dweck pointed to one study in which students were taught that struggling through hard work helps the brain form new, stronger connections and become smarter. Those who learned the lesson improved their grades sharply, especially struggling students, while those who did not slipped, she said. She described the Harlem classroom as a place where that lesson was taught every day, where not knowing something meant not knowing it yet.

The result was not a one-time outcome. That same teacher, a Stanford graduate, later took over a class of fourth graders in the South Bronx that was far behind, Dweck said. She brought those students to first place statewide on New York's mathematics exam.

For Dweck, the point is equality. Groups of children who chronically perform poorly are often treated as if poor performance is inevitable. These classrooms suggest it is not, and that when teachers treat intelligence as something to build, children who started the year unable to hold a pencil can finish it among the highest scoring students in the country.