Mindset matters

We all love those students who just refuse to quit. At sometime during their lives, they adopted a philosophy that they were going to do the best they could, and they recognized that accomplishing their dreams was simply a matter of doing the necessary work in order to be successful. But we also have had those students who didn't even seem to try, and there was very little we could do to get them going. They coasted along, made poor grades, and always seemed to indicate that they weren't going to try. They were “smart,” they never needed to study, and they certainly weren't about to start now no matter what was said to them. Better yet, their struggles weren't their fault, but rather due to “bad teaching.” I thought that was just the way it was going to be.