CUNY Academic Commons

Elizabeth Klein (she/her) wrote:Dear Casandra,

Thank you for your honesty. I found this article by Adam Grant a while back on the feedback sandwich that helped me, especially in giving feedback to students. https://adamgrant.substack.com/p/stop-serving-the-compliment-sandwich

If you have trouble, copy into your browser. I hope that you like…

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I Had not heard about the sandwich approach for providing criticism. I had seen it in play. In my culture criticism is not a negative word or action, and the sandwich approach is hard for me to use. My mind goes directly to what I can teach them not what they already know, and I tend to dump my constructive criticism without any sugarcoating.…[Read more]

As a high school and undergraduate student Algebra and statistics were topics I feared and disliked. I always had to put much more effort and often felt the explanations and instructions were in some alien language. It felt as if concepts were well beyond my mental capacity. Because I was embarrassed to ask for help from classmates and…[Read more]

Love this! Thanks!

I truly identify with your post and have also felt overwhelmed by trying to implement too many changes at once, also, overwhelmed when implementing many changes, and having to evaluate which combinations worked out well. Interestingly, incorporating a more flexible mindset when teaching has not YET allowed me to regularly have this growth mindset…[Read more]

Very insightful post, thank you! I especially find the point about reducing the feeling of not being good enough. My students often say “I am not good at math or calculations” they accepted failure and became gave up on growth when it comes to calculations and probabilities, which is a big part of my course.

Also interested in the con…[Read more]

Since the beginning of my career, I struggled with fear of failure fed by me being a Hispanic woman with dyslexia. Learning about growth mindset in the past and now has allowed me to let go of feelings of shame or embarrassment when I underperform and has increase my productivity by letting go of paralyzing fear of failure. By incorporating…[Read more]

Casandra Silva Sibilin (she/her/hers) wrote:I think this is a great quote to reflect on and open discussion about growth mindsets. I agree and disagree!

I agree at the surface level. The quote is about contrasting failure and success and embracing failure as a learning opportunity–very growth mindset! It also makes me think of research on n…

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Yes! Failure can be paralyzing at times, especially when struggling with perfectionism. Perfectionism and growth mindset might be a good pair of incompetencies/competencies to work at balancing at the same time…

I tell my students (and myself) that “failing with style” is being ready to analyze my failure, learn from it, and improve my next attempt.

However, as a STEM researcher, I identify much more with the provided quote “Failure is a better teacher than success”. It is self-explanatory, and it is how I experience experiment failures in the lab. When…[Read more]