Dolly Case--the wife of one of our Esperanza board founders, Cody Case--shared this on FB this morning. It fits beautifully with what I was going to write today.
Because we are going to have all our Esperanza scholars learn to play chess I felt it was important for me to learn. Therefore, I bought a $1 chess set and a book written for children and started my chess learning quest and made learning chess a 2012 goal. Then my husband introduced me to "Chess Titans" on the computer. It was so humbling to continually have a computer beat me. I lost so many times I quit counting and wanted to forget it. Then I finally had a win. Needless to say, this did not make me a chess champion and I will probably still lose MANY games, but it gave me hope. Plus, I love the game and the challenge.
This experience reminds me of a couple of things. First, success helps breed success. We want to give our Esperanza scholars opportunities to feel success. Second, it is important to have a growth mindset as Carol Dweck would suggest. We want to encourage this mindset at Esperanza for both our scholars and our staff so we know that it takes effort to achieve our goals and not give up just because we don't achieve early on in the game.
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