America Succeeds defines Growth Mindset as the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, strategy, and support. This encompasses embracing challenges as opportunities, persisting through setbacks, learning from criticism, finding lessons in failure, and being inspired by others’ success rather than threatened by it.
Olivia met with her advisor yet again defeated after another veterinary clinic rejection. “Maybe I should just wait until college,” she said. Four years earlier, she could barely present to a group. Now, after months of “no’s,” she persisted—showing up in person, introducing herself, pushing through discouragement. Her advisor Jef and internship coordinator Casey kept supporting her search. The last clinic she met with offered her a shadow day. They kept her for two more years.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Connor opened his laptop to revise his science project—again. At Building 21, a bad grade wasn’t final. The school’s revision system taught him to view feedback as an opportunity for growth rather than a sign of failure—understanding that struggle means he’s still learning, not that he lacks ability.
Their transformations weren’t accidental—they were systematically developed. While many schools hope growth mindset emerges naturally through motivational posters, Gibson Ek High School and Building 21 discovered that true growth mindset develops through three interlocking practices: making growth explicit and visible, engaging students in authentic challenges requiring persistence, and integrating growth mindset throughout all learning. When these practices work in concert, they create students who don’t just believe they can improve but understand exactly how.
Building 21: Where Nothing Goes Backward
Picture Gabriella, a senior, opening her laptop in English class. On screen: her senior capstone project tracking criminal justice issues in Philadelphia and Puerto Rico. Four years earlier, she’d arrived from a bilingual school, overwhelmed by computer-based learning, struggling to comprehend assignments. “I was just to myself,” she recalls. Now she navigates dual enrollment courses, honors classes, and complex research with confidence. What changed? “Communications here is a big bro. They’re still going to talk to you even when you’re wrong. They won’t leave you hanging.”
Welcome to Building 21, a competency-based high school in Philadelphia where Laura Shubilla, the director, has architected a revolutionary insight into daily practice: “Nothing can make your progress go backward. This completely changes students’ relationship with challenge and failure.” Students work through unique domains—Habits of Success, Wayfinding Experiences, NextGen Essentials, and Personal Development—besides traditional academics, advancing at their own pace with unlimited opportunities to demonstrate mastery.
Building 21 makes growth mindset explicit through its competency-based system where every skill has a visible learning progression. Walk into any classroom and you’ll see rubrics displaying specific indicators for performance levels 2 through 12. Reese Cogswell, who teaches science and junior seminar, explains: “I can view and score student work based on the specific indicators within each competency. Students understand exactly what they need to do to improve and progress to the next level.”
The Lift platform serves as the school’s growth-making engine. Every student accesses their personalized learning plan showing performance levels across all competencies with visual progression tracking. This reframing is psychologically powerful. A student who receives a D may think “I’m bad at this.” A student at level 7 who needs level 9 thinks “What do I need to do to get to the next level?”
Most revolutionary: early attempts don’t average into final evaluations. Only the highest demonstration counts.
“In traditional schools, if you fail a test, that F is averaged into your grade forever. Here, you keep working until you achieve competency. Students aren’t afraid to tackle difficult competencies because they know they’ll have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery.”
Authentic challenges at Building 21 create genuine struggles where growth mindset becomes necessary. Jim Wetzel’s freshman environmental science water filter project exemplifies this design. Students work in teams to design filters that actually – not hypothetically – reduce water turbidity, but with measurable results from real testing. Here’s the crucial element: most filters fail initially. Water stays cloudy. Materials don’t work. Designs prove flawed. But Jim builds in multiple testing cycles specifically so students experience failure as data for learning. Through repeated attempts—test, analyze, revise, retest—students discover that initial failure doesn’t predict final outcomes.
Senior capstones escalate authentic challenge. Gabriella’s criminal justice research requires conducting interviews, analyzing sources, synthesizing findings—skills that intimidated her freshman year. “It’s stressful,” she admits. “But it’s understandable, because how am I going to learn?” That question captures the transformation: not “I can’t do this” but “How will I learn if I don’t try?”
Finally, Building 21 integrates growth mindset throughout all learning experiences, making it the school’s fundamental operating system. Perhaps no story better illustrates this integration than Hannah’s grit assignment. She describes being “so annoyed” by the teacher’s persistence: “I would just write one little thing and turn it in. She’s like ‘wrong. I want you to really figure out what grit is.’ Okay, what if this was Turnitin? Wrong. Come back and do more research.” Going back and forth felt “so tedious. I’m like, Well, grit can mean a lot of things, challenging it. And she’s like, No, I really want you to dive deeper.”
The teacher embodied growth mindset teaching by refusing to accept superficial work and requiring multiple revisions without giving up on Hannah. The long-term impact became clear in college when Hannah alone in her English class could define grit with depth and precision. “That was a moment for me that I just realized, like, you have to value certain teachers that push you to your limit, because you’re gonna be upset every time that they turn you round. But like, now you have it in you.”
Connor’s revision example shows the system in action: “In the first time I scored a six minute reflection and I scored 11. That’s going to be replaced with 11.” He can redo competencies through new assignments in the same studio—when he disagreed with a score of 6, his teacher told him an upcoming debate covered the same competency: “He said you can improve it doing that and that’s exactly what I did. I improved it.” His highest score always counts. Teachers provide targeted feedback using Lift’s learning progressions, guiding students toward next-level performance.
Gibson Ek: Reframing “Not Yet” Through Dashboard Visibility and Authentic Struggle
Olivia met with her advisor for what felt like the twentieth time, shoulders slumped. Another veterinary clinic had said no. “Maybe I should just wait until college.” Jef leaned forward. “You’re not being rejected—you’re learning what works. Each ‘no’ is information.” For weeks, Olivia had been emailing, calling, even showing up in person at clinics around Seattle. But at Gibson Ek High School in Issaquah, finding an internship wasn’t optional. It was required. And that requirement, combined with visible growth tracking and sustained advisor support, would transform how Olivia understood her own capabilities.
Gibson Ek makes growth mindset explicit through its competency dashboard and portfolio system that transform abstract growth into visible, trackable progress. The dashboard displays development across Personal Qualities and Communication competencies using growing trees as visual metaphors. “We have trees, and they grow,” explains Shayla. “You check off different aspects of a competency, and the more filled out the tree is, the more you can see your progress.”
One student reflection captures the dashboard’s growth mindset power: “The way that our dashboard works, we don’t have grades, there’s nothing that you can do to make your progress go backwards. And everything you do is better than doing nothing.” This design prevents anxiety about losing ground and communicates that development is cumulative rather than fragile. Gibson Ek’s dashboard recognizes all learning as contribution toward eventual competency.
Lucas, a freshman, articulates the system’s foundation: “It’s growth based, that means everyone is kind of able to meet whatever level they need to, instead of just setting some unattainable standards.” He recognizes the fundamental shift from criterion-referenced to growth-referenced assessment. Success isn’t one-size-fits-all but individualized—what constitutes success for one student differs from another based on starting point, challenges, and circumstances.
Lauren captures this transformation: “My first exhibition was terrible. I read from cards, couldn’t answer questions. But that wasn’t shameful—it was my starting point. By senior year, I could present my capstone for an hour without notes. The growth was visible to everyone, including me.”
Real growth mindset emerges through authentic challenges where genuine stakes demand persistence. Gibson Ek’s internship requirement—that all students must identify, pursue, and secure their own placements beginning freshman year—creates what the school calls “productive struggle with support.” Olivia’s veterinary clinic search exemplifies this crucible. After months of rejection: “I almost gave up because I had called and emailed like 15 different places. Nobody was responding.” Her advisor Jef, internship coordinator Casey, and Olivia herself kept pushing. Olivia now reflects: “If I hadn’t persisted through that, I might have not ever discovered how passionate I was about veterinary medicine.”
Lauren’s capstone crisis illustrates growth mindset developing through different challenges. This high-achieving senior couldn’t find the nonprofit placement she needed. “For Lauren, a senior who always has it together, it was embarrassing to sit with kids who didn’t have internships yet.” Rather than giving up, Lauren designed shadow days at multiple organizations, eventually securing her placement.
Saya captures how the school validates effort despite outcomes: “even if it didn’t work out, you did a ton of work, and maybe next year, once this gets figured out, or once you’ve grown a bit more… you can have the event again.” This removes finality from setbacks, treats growth as inevitable, and frames challenges as solvable through persistence.
Gibson Ek integrates growth mindset throughout every experience through multi-year advisory relationships, peer modeling, and embedded reflection. Advisors work with the same 15-20 students for four years, witnessing every struggle and breakthrough. “It’s really powerful to work with a student for four years,” Jef reflects. “I can say, you’ve done these things really well, and these things you’re growing on. Let’s focus on growth.” With Olivia, Jef had to focus on her managing her perfectionism: “Our conversations [centered on] how to manage all that she’s doing without stress and anxiety.” Over time, Olivia learned to regularly request: “Can we sit down for a half hour this week and get your feedback?”
The multi-age advisory structure creates powerful peer modeling. Jef observes: “Students see these other kids who’ve had to go through difficult things, and eventually it paid off.” When freshmen witness seniors confidently presenting capstones, they also remember those seniors as struggling sophomores. Growth becomes the community’s lived experience, not abstract motivation.
Scarlett, a freshman, captures the cultural shift: “you’re competing against yourself. Not anybody else. Just can I grow further?” This reorientation from social comparison to self-comparison represents fundamental growth mindset development.
The Multiplier Effect: Why Three Practices Transform Mindset
Growth mindset isn’t just positive thinking—it’s the resilience engine that transforms setbacks into stepping stones. Without it, talented students quit at first struggle, confusing current inability with permanent limitation.
When schools systematically develop growth mindset through these three practices, they don’t just hope students believe they can improve—they actively build the infrastructure that makes improvement possible. At Building 21, Hannah’s teacher pushed her to “dive deeper” through persistent revision until that struggle became the foundation for college success. At Gibson Ek, Olivia’s months of veterinary clinic rejection became the crucible for discovering her passion. The competency systems at both schools communicate daily that progress never goes backward, that every attempt counts, that success looks different for each learner.
As Connor from Building 21 reflects: “The biggest thing I learned here wasn’t any subject—it was that I can learn anything if I’m willing to struggle through it.” That’s growth mindset—not a belief, but a lived reality, architected into every structure that shapes the learning day.
Your Path Forward
The transformation from fixed to growth mindset isn’t accidental—it’s architected through structures that make capability development visible, necessary, and achievable. You can begin creating these conditions in your classroom or school:
Make Growth Visible:
- Display student work progression over time, not just final products
- Create “growth walls” showing how skills develop through iteration
- Have students maintain portfolios tracking their improvement journey
- Replace letter grades with competency progression levels where possible
- Use visual progress indicators that students check regularly
Create Authentic Challenge:
- Design projects where initial attempts rarely succeed completely
- Invite students to tackle real problems without predetermined solutions
- Connect learners with actual community needs requiring genuine innovation
- Build in multiple revision cycles before final demonstrations
- Require students to pursue opportunities independently
Integrate Throughout Learning:
- Use “not yet” language instead of “incorrect” or “failing”
- Require reflection on growth and learning process, not just content mastery
- Assess improvement over time rather than single-point performance
- Celebrate productive struggle and learning from setbacks
- Ensure early attempts don’t average into final evaluations
Build From What You Have:
- Add revision requirements to existing assignments
- Transform test corrections into learning opportunities with additional attempts
- Share your own learning struggles and growth with students
- Create mentoring relationships where students support each other through challenges
When schools systematically develop growth mindset through these three practices, they develop young people who understand that struggle is learning, challenges are opportunities, and their capabilities are always expanding. They cultivate professionals who view challenges as opportunities and leaders who help others recognize potential. This conscious development—rather than hoping mindset shifts emerge from motivational posters—prepares students not just for next year’s class but for navigating an uncertain future where adaptability matters more than any specific knowledge.
Next week: Mindfulness: How schools develop present-moment awareness and self-regulation that enables focused learning and emotional balance.
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