When you look at semester grade reports -- do you think about the grades more than the comments? When you get back assessments, papers or projects -- do you think about the percentage or letter at the top more than the written feedback? When you think about your homework -- do you focus on the tasks you need to complete rather than what habits and training that work helps you develop?

Of course, those points of focus are reasonable, but there’s a hidden danger too. If you focus only on your work as what you produce and your measure of success only by your grades -- this can limit your perspective, undermine your confidence, and diminish your dignity. You are so much more than a completed paper or project -- so much more than a percentage grade or a GPA.  

So what could reframing school work look like?

Let’s start with some analogies:

• If you’re an athlete, you know how much time you put into strengthening your muscles and improving your aerobic stamina. You can see that, over the course of the season, your muscles are more toned and you can run longer without getting winded.
• If you play a musical instrument, you can see over the course of mastering a piece that your movements become more crisp -- the sound that you create is more smooth, and you play with more confidence.
• The same is true with art. Your strokes and lines may start shakily -- and, as a painting or sketch emerges more fully, you move with more confidence and fluidity.
• If you’re a dancer, you might approach new choreography with halting steps -- but as you refine your muscle memory -- you move freely and without hesitation through your dance.

In all of these examples, you see visible evidence that the work has transformed you in some way. This helps you know that the work is worth it, no matter how the performance goes or if you win the game. Your transformation through that physical work is visible.

The work of training your brain -- is less visible -- but equally as transformative.

• Every piece of information, new vocabulary, or new language you work your brain to sort, organize, and connect to other learning -- tones your learning memory and expands your capacity.
• Every core text you read, primary source document you dissect, and piece of art you observe -- trains your brain to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize.
• Every math problem you solve and lab experiment you execute -- helps you learn how to uncover truths and how to innovate solutions.

The number of repeated movements and pivots your mind engages in throughout a given day is more numerous and complex than anything you can do physically. While it may be hard to see how that cognitive work transforms your brain, impacts your vision, strengthens your heart, and trains you for leadership -- you are being deeply transformed through the intellectual work you engage in actively.

To fully appreciate the value of this less visible mental work takes imagination -- consider these tips to reframe your learning:

• Value how you develop your mental fitness habits.
• Rely on your coaches (teachers, mentors and parents) to guide you.
• Embrace the value of the work and don’t just fixate on the outcome of that work.
• Remember that every day that you engage fully in this work, you gain strength, tone, stamina and confidence to tackle new challenges.
• For there is no limit to the potential you will discover on this lifelong learning adventure!