Teaching Students the College Mindset

About 12 years ago, in a diverse middle school 10 miles north of New York City, one of us led his team in designing a college access program around a fundamental belief that preparation needed to start early. At the pivotal developmental stage of adolescence, while students’ identities are forming, the program’s goal was to internalize an unshakable confidence in their own abilities and promise.

Poverty remains a significant hurdle on the path to college, as evidenced by an inadequacy of academic preparation. To improve academic outcomes of underserved students, the school followed strategies that effectively reverse income impediments to collegiate success described in Paul Tough’s 2014 New York Times article “Who Gets to Graduate?” (article is paywalled). In particular, removing students’ misconceptions about their intelligence, fostering a sense of belonging, and encouraging self-advocacy all work together to support long-term academic success.

Identify Skills That Support Academic Success

The three-year intervention program held that while remediation is necessary to close achievement gaps, student skills centered on personal motivation crucially influence academic performance: self-advocacy, monitoring one’s progress through the ups and downs of a marking period, and recognizing when help such as guidance or tutoring is needed.

These characteristics enable students to right themselves at pivotal moments when they might otherwise falter. Together, they form a self-sustaining growth mindset and a sense of belonging that supports further success.

A Sense of Belonging Promotes Student Confidence

The standard response at any school level is to increase academic support. That’s a sensible strategy, but the need to access help caused students to question whether they were college material. Effective interventions, while offering remediation and smaller classes, also focused on belonging. Participating in a support group helps to create that feeling. As Tough stated in his article,“If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears.”

Following this guidance, the middle school identified students from low-income families who demonstrated academic ability on the basis of achievement test scores and teacher recommendations. The group of approximately 24 students met with the principal and the school social worker.

The program’s objective was to strengthen students’ perception of themselves as capable students, provide them with “student skills” they would need when the going got rough, and build a feeling of membership in a supportive community. The name of the group, the Wizards, communicated to the students that they were talented and special.

8 Strategies That Support Self-Regulated Learning

Here are the eight activities that were implemented in the group meetings:

1. Progress monitoring: Two weeks before the midpoint and the end of the marking period, Wizards met to review their online grade book under the guidance of the principal or social worker. Students used the data to identify classes in which their performance was lagging, with time to raise their progress report and report card grades.

2. Self-advocacy plans: The next step was to understand why the grade was lower and what they could do about it. The principal and social worker’s role was nondirective, prompting students to devise a plan for themselves. For example, some students met the teacher during lunchtime (a regular practice in the school), completed missing homework assignments, or studied extra-hard for an upcoming assessment. These decisions fostered a sense of agency that led students to realize that they could control the outcome of their situation.

3. Presentations from role models: A number of faculty members originally from low-income families or first-generation college students periodically met with the Wizards to share their journey, their struggles, and their accomplishments. The purpose was to normalize struggle: It’s part of learning and can be overcome. The alternative, Tough found, was doubting oneself and giving up.

4. Brainology curriculum: Developed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, Brainology is an online interactive curriculum geared to students in grades 5–9 that teaches the principles of growth mindset and neuroplasticity (free trials are available; the subscription cost is $500 per class and $4,500 per school site). In sixth grade, the inaugural year of the Wizards program, students completed the self-paced, computer-based program and participated in some recommended group activities.

We were able to underwrite Brainology’s significant cost with a grant from a foundation that supported first-generation college access. As an alternative, there are a wealth of free growth mindset resources available online that provide teaching strategies and curriculum guides to help creative teachers support their students. Alternatively, inventive teachers can create a growth mindset curriculum themselves.

5. Celebrations: At the end of every marking period, students who earned honor roll status, or just missed by one grade, joined a little field trip across the street to a candy store, chose an item off the shelves, and then reconvened in the principal’s office for a party. These celebrations were designed to raise students’ self-confidence and heighten camaraderie among the Wizards.

6. Extracurricular activities: What do you remember best about high school and college? Perhaps it was participation in an extracurricular club or social group or playing a sport, which is frequently how students build an emotional attachment and sense of belonging at school. For this reason, Wizards were strongly encouraged to join a school club or sport. Problem-solving with the principal and social worker resolved some of the obstacles they faced, such as the need for late transportation home.

7. Peer interactions: One of the most significant interventions began inadvertently. The principal and social worker noticed that when they were called away to address crises elsewhere in the building at the outset of a Wizards meeting, the students spent the downtime holding productive conversations. They shared their strategies to prepare for upcoming tests or manage their homework load and recounted extra help sessions with teachers. As a result, late arrival became a regular practice, so that students could have time to talk and bond. A secretary within earshot was able to loosely monitor students.

8. Thinking outside the box: There were regular meetings among teachers, the social worker, and the principal to brainstorm strategies, recognizing that the students required an outside-the-box approach—especially to fix immediate problems.

For example, before one particular school day began, a teacher expressed concern that a student was likely to fail a test that day because of poor study habits. Together, the principal and teacher devised a plan for the student to study while the class was administered the test. Then, he would take the exam in the classroom during lunchtime. He aced the test.

While this unorthodox plan might seem like applying Band-Aids to a bigger problem, educators can come up with reasonable accommodations for students who need us to go a little further out of our way.