Rise to the challenge.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz. See a long quote from the article below:

Rise to the challenge.

(cheezburger)

quote from the article; "McGonigal" is Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University.

An easy intervention to help students build a growth mindset about stressful situations is to break into small groups and share stories of facing challenges and persevering through them. The stories don’t have to be academic, but it should be a time when the student got better at that skill or learned something. Then students can write about the strengths they drew on, reflect on who or what supported them, and think about what they learned and how they grew. This is particularly powerful when adults share, too.

Sharing with a group can help students see that struggle is common to everyone. It can also help highlight different strategies people used in those moments of adversity and how productive challenges can be.

“The most effective mindset interventions start with a new idea, some science, and then you have people talk about it,” McGonigal said. When students can relate the idea to their own experiences, it becomes much more powerful.

“When we are anxious, stop interpreting it as a sign we are inadequate and start seeing it as a way we can rise to the challenge,” McGonigal said.