Monday, July 11, 2016

Anjali - Ok, I Don't Know! What a relief!!

Anjali recounted a time when she and her friend Samaira (who has now left the school) played a game in the bus ride back home. They waved at people on the road and whoever got the most responses from people on the road won. It was a lovely game.

'The idea was to console them,' she said, using 'console' in the 'making the other person feel better' way.  I pointed out that perhaps'console' might not be the right word because 'console' is more about making people feel better when they were in grief or some sadness or stress. What Anjali and Samaira did I said was perhaps add joy into the lives of the people on the road.

'I know, I know' said she irritated at my splitting of the hairs and a frown came over her happy face. She does not take kindly to being corrected. (I don't either.)

I kept silent.

After a moment, she said softly.

'Ok, I don't know,' remembering the talk I gave to her class about the Fixed Mindset and Learning Mindset. (The FM goes 'I know, I know' and the LM goes 'I don't know, but I will learn and can you help me learn.')

Soon as she said that she looked at me and laughed. We both laughed for a long time after that.

I felt relieved. If she could take that sligh snub in her stride, remember the Fixed Mindset response of 'I know, I know', lower her ego and give a corrected 'Learning Mindset' response of 'I don't know and its ok but I will learn' and laugh about it, she will be in a good space as far as learnng and self-correction goes.

The faster the better. Time, I did that faster too.  

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Waving at people on the road was my childhood memory too. Anjali, keep going with learning mindset.

Harimohan said...

Thanks Chudamani. Must have brought back memories for you. It's surprising the kind of things kids do. I am finding it difficult to keep pace with how many things they do so creatively and so right.