Apply 'growth mindset,' change school decision

To Dr. Bein and the AHSD25 school board: I implore you to consider a method of critical thinking that district teachers have asked students to practice regularly. The cognitive process of "growth mindset" has permeated D25 learning for a few years now. It has changed the way my four children (grades 8, 6, 4) approach a difficult concept or new lesson.

Growth mindset allows a learner to revise his answer, without judgment, shame or insecurity, and then seek corrections with new information. Instead of remaining fixed in the same mindset, the learner sees value in the process of being wrong, yet humbly admits he can still get it right.

You all have an opportunity to revise your answer by adopting the current guidance and research from the Harvard Global Health institute, the scientific body used to create your now-outdated metrics. We have positive information on the lack of COVID-19 spread in schools. You have a green light to shift course and get it right.

The school environment creates safety through layered mitigations, not reliance upon fickle community metrics. We know more children can be in more classrooms more days of the week. This is fact and you cannot continue to tell us it's not.

Implement growth mindset. Have the strength of character to try again. Times like these require all of us to remain humble in the face of challenges and new information that might contradict the old which informed prior decisions. Saying that the current metrics required to return full time are set in stone is wrong, ignorant, arrogant, dangerous and lazy. If a fixed mindset is preventing meeting and re- negotiating metrics with the ATA, then your refusal to grow and change is keeping thousands of children in District 25 from accessing the education they deserve.

Leah Ross

Arlington Heights