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You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest into the lives of others. Find out more at youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You can mentor. What up, Mentors?
Speaker 1:Today's guest is Doctor. David Yeager, a leading developmental psychologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. David is one of the world's foremost experts on the science of motivation and adolescent development. He's worked with institutions like the Gates Foundation and the White House. And his research has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and NPR.
Speaker 1:His new book, 10 to 25, the science of motivating young people, draws on decades of research to explain how we as mentors can help young people thrive, not just in school, but in life as well. David dives into what really drives motivation, how mentors can be better guides through the messiness of growing up, and why the years ten to twenty five are so critical for shaping purpose, resilience, and identity. Whether you're a parent, mentor, educator, or leader, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. We talk about the mentor's dilemma, status and respect, the mentor's mindset, why we should not be a yell, tell, shame, and blame mentor, but instead should have high support, but also we should call our mentees up to more. I'm so excited about this episode.
Speaker 1:Share it with a friend and your staff, your volunteers, whoever mentors, they need to hear this. Check out the book 10 to 25, and remember, you can mentor. Alright. Welcome to the You Can Mentor podcast. This is your favorite mentoring friend, Zach, and I'm here with doctor David Yeager.
Speaker 1:David, say hello. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Man, David, I am I am so excited about this podcast. This sounds super weird.
Speaker 1:Huge fan. Loved the book. So I'm pumped up, man.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Glad I'm glad I'm amazed anytime people tell me that they've read it because people have a lot of choices on how to spend their time. So
Speaker 1:And so I was at the library picking up some kind of book with my son, and he's over there, you know, doing doing god knows what. And I see this book. It says 10 to 25. And I was like, what's that all about? And I saw it, I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Like, this is right up my mentoring alley. And so, dude, I I think I started on a Wednesday, and I finished up the whole book in, like, two days. So loved it. So encouraged, and I took, like, a ton of notes. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm super excited just to get to, chat today about the book with you. So Sure thing. Yeah. Absolutely. That's great.
Speaker 1:But, man, first and foremost, I would just I would love to hear more about you. I hear that you are a graduate of Notre Dame, but now you work at Texas, which is a big deal, and you used to teach. So I kinda wanna hear about all that, man.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah. I went to undergraduate Notre Dame and had a good time. I enjoyed it. I was a great books major, so lots of literature, philosophy, arguing, that sort of thing. And then I became an English teacher in a low income middle school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2:And so I was six through eight English, and since there was an elementary attached, was also the K-eight BE coach. So I taught eight preps a day. Never taught the same thing twice in two years. It was really, you know, challenging but fulfilling and very busy for sure. While there, I coached basketball and I ran the book club and the computer club, and I would like fix the internet when it broke.
Speaker 2:You have to like climb through the attic and fix like the cables and the router and everything. So it was a very fulfilling and busy time. And I ultimately left not because I didn't love teaching, but because I felt like my contribution could be to conduct research on a better way to engage young people. And I felt like I'd learned a few things in practice and from my experience in all those different roles, but that we still needed more and better advice. And so I ended up in graduate school at Stanford after I taught and studied under a guy who started out studying character development, interestingly enough, and kind of made my way over to work with Carol Dweck, who developed the concept of growth mindset.
Speaker 2:And so by my second or third year, we were working on projects, and I ended up graduating really quickly. At the end of my third year, finished my dissertation, and then kind of stuck around and ran a bunch of studies, then got a job at Texas right away. So after my fifth year, got a job as a professor. I've been there for thirteen years, I think, in the psychology department. So that's what I do.
Speaker 1:Just love that, David. I'm a teacher too. I taught sixth grade. Taught kids how to read, taught kids how to write. I was a coach as well.
Speaker 1:There isn't anything that taught me more about how to work with kids than Yeah. Having a 100 and some odd kids every single day that I'm I'm in charge of. And, you know, that ultimately got me on the path of how to mentor what works and what doesn't work. So
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I you know, there are a lot of twists and turns in your career, and you never really know what the right choice And so you have to rely on people who have different levels of expertise and also maybe see something in you you don't know about yourself. And so mentors played a huge role in my life for sure. And so it's kind of nice to be able to study those adults and what they do and how they can be a turning point for someone because many people think back on their own lives and are like, those are the most meaningful relationships I had, those people who pushed me and changed me and pushed me on a new path.
Speaker 1:Who were some of those people? Who were some of your mentors?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of different people along the way. Certainly Carol Dweck as my PhD advisor gave me the most important thing, which was the training in how to run a study, write a paper. And that was, you know, critical. But then there are other people too.
Speaker 2:Write about this mentor of mine named Dan Lapsley, who is a psychology professor at Notre Dame. And I didn't meet him when I was an undergraduate. I met him when I was in this teaching program. So during the summers, we had to come back and do a master's. And so he was my summer psychology professor.
Speaker 2:And I wrote like a not very good term paper, but he took it seriously. And he was like, there's a kernel of an idea here. I could see you publishing this. And I thought that was a weird thing to say. I was like, probably three a.
Speaker 2:M. When I started this. It's very nice of you to think that my three a. M. Paper had a kernel of truth in it.
Speaker 2:But even so, it's just like he just treated me like someone who was gonna be a serious scholar. And that made me believe that I could be in his field. And ultimately, when I applied to graduate school, was it was under people who were doing work that resembled what he did. And he was my main letter writer. So kind of that, you know, the simple act of even grading a paper and taking somebody seriously in a moment where they're a little vulnerable, it made a big difference to me.
Speaker 1:You talk in your book about the mentor's dilemma. Can you just kind of share just a tiny bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's a term coined by Jeffrey Cohen, who's a Stanford professor, who was a professor of mine and who's a great guy. Has a great book called Belonging that I recommend. And he initially framed it in terms of a college professor giving critical feedback to an undergraduate at a great selective place like Stanford. And so the student might say, who do you think you are giving me feedback?
Speaker 2:I'm a great writer. You know, I'm a top student. And on top of that, if students from underrepresented groups might think, oh, this teacher is biased against me. Like they're out to get me. And so there's all kinds of layers of distrust that can be relevant as well.
Speaker 2:So it creates this dilemma whereby if I'm a mentor and I care about a young person, then if I give them critical feedback, then I could crush their spirit and I could push them away. And that would be bad. But if I withhold feedback and I try to puff up their self esteem, they might not ever get better because I haven't been honest with them about what I as an expert see and what they need to do differently. And so it's this dilemma that comes up a lot anytime you're an expert and you're trying to help a novice, whether it's you're a basketball coach, you're trying to change somebody's shot to, I'm a writing instructor and I'm gonna change your essay to, I'm a math teacher and I'm gonna tell you you're solving the equations wrong. And anytime you care about somebody and you wanna help them get better, then then you're kind of worried that you're gonna either lie to someone or crush them.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't feel like there's a good solution to that.
Speaker 1:Tell me how we can handle that balance, that kinda tension between challenge. Like, hey, man. You can do this. I have faith in you. Come on.
Speaker 1:Let's go. And creating a safe environment where they feel loved, they feel known, they feel cared for.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we've done some experiments, again, originally led by Jeffrey Cohen and some others, I want to give them credit, where what we argue is that at issue is the trust that a person has for the person giving the critical feedback. And given that, one of the best ways to restore trust is to just be clear about your intentions. Right? Because when you distrust someone, it's that you think they don't have your best interests at heart, or you just think they're not competent.
Speaker 2:But that first one is really important. And so if you can train leaders and mentors and teachers and coaches to just be clear and transparent about the reasons for their critical feedback, then it allows people to rebuild trust. And so in one experiment, we had teachers handwrite notes that they put on students' essays. And those notes said, in half of the cases, said, I'm giving you these comments because I have very high standards and I know that you can meet them. And so the two pieces there are first, the appeal to the high standard, and second, the assurance that with the right support, they can meet that feedback.
Speaker 2:And then in a control condition, the note didn't convey any new information. It just said, I'm giving these comments so you have feedback on your essay. And the critical question was, after getting criticism, are you willing to revise your essay? And in the control condition, only about forty percent of students even turned in a revised essay, which of course is like soul crushing for the teachers. They're like, I spent all weekend grading these essays and only 40% of you are even going to turn in a new one?
Speaker 2:The other sixty percent are like, no, I'm good. Everything's fine. It's frustrating, and it ruins your morale as an educator. Whereas in the treatment group, in the group who got what we call wise feedback, the high standards plus assurance, There, we saw eighty percent who were willing to revise their essays. And so double the rate.
Speaker 2:And that's really encouraging because it suggests that with the right framing, you can double the rate at which our mentorship is taken up by a mentee and put to good use. And that that makes us feel a lot better, feels makes us feel more effective as well.
Speaker 1:I think one thing that that shows me, David, is the amount of power that our words have. Right? You talked about at the very start how you had a mentor who said, hey, man. I think that there's something here. Right?
Speaker 1:And that ultimately gave you the confidence to keep on going. And that gave you self esteem. That gave you self confidence. And here, you give these mentees assurance, hey, I believe in you. I'm giving you this feedback because I love you, because I care about you, because I want to see you succeed.
Speaker 1:The power of a mentor's words truly can have a tremendous impact in the life of our mentees.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean, what I like to argue is that it's especially important to clarify our language and communication in scenarios where there's a default alternative explanation, that could be really bad. And so what's the default for a kid who's getting criticized? And the default is, I'll never be good enough for this person. You know, I'm a nobody or no one cares about me, etcetera.
Speaker 2:And I'll never live up to their expectations. And they're critiquing me because they wanna make me feel bad or they think I'm no good. And so if all you do is say, hey, your essay needs to improve this or your baseball swing needs to be that, then what they're going to hear is, this person doesn't care about me. They don't like me. You leave it up for interpretation.
Speaker 2:And so that happens anytime there's a power disparity between the person giving the criticism and the person receiving it. And that's true in most mentor mentee relationships. And so that's why you really have to watch what you say and communicate clearly. And specifically, communicate that that you're doing it out of a good and positive intention to help them and to and to assist them to improve.
Speaker 1:And so don't leave it up to interpretation. If there's doubt, make sure to clarify. And, hey. I'm saying this because I love you because I'm here for you because I'm right? But we as as mentors, let's be sure to be intentional about if you see that your mentee might be taking what you're saying one way, make sure to make it crystal clear that you're saying it because you want the best for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, for me as a youth sports coach, the kind of thing I have to say a lot is basically, look. You're not doing it right, but I I care about you too much to let you leave my team with that swing because then you won't enjoy the sport. You know? You're not gonna if if you can't do it right, then won't have as much success.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have as much success, you might not like it. And I think you could be good. I think you would love the sport. And so my commitment to you is to always be honest with you and to help you and support you, but not to lie to you and tell you that it's great if it's not going to work. Now in those kinds of settings, you can be a really credible mentor because if a kid goes up to the plate and strikes out every time, you're like, see?
Speaker 2:You know? I was right. And like, that's a kind of terrifying situation because the kid's alone at home plate, you know, in the batter's box, and no parent can sit there and swing the bat for the kid. You know? But a lot of times in life, adults steal the moment from kids, and they never really find out that what they're doing isn't quite right.
Speaker 2:And because of that, and when they get criticism, they don't realize it's designed to help them because they've always been successful because some adult has always stepped in and done things for them. And so I think this transparency stuff really becomes important when there's a lack of direct and clear feedback, and therefore where the kid might have a trust issue and might not think that you should be criticizing them.
Speaker 1:How do we give those words? Like, if we are saying, hey. I am gonna speak the truth to you. How can we do it in the best possible way to make them feel safe and not see us as someone who's trying to come down on them?
Speaker 2:Know, wise feedback, which I just described is is a version of what can be done. But recently, what we've done is try to go study great mentors, and we follow them, and we figure out what they do and what they say on a day to day basis. And interestingly, they're doing more than just wise feedback, although they are saying that kind of stuff. But they're, like, they're really over clarifying what they're doing. Like they're explaining themselves three times more than a typical person would think they have to.
Speaker 2:But the other thing they're doing is they're asking way more questions than they're telling information. So great mentors are like curious why a mentee is doing it what seems to be the wrong way. Like it's actually interesting to them because they wanna troubleshoot and they wanna problem solve together. Whereas, like, the low quality leaders, they're not interested in a reason for somebody's mistake. They're just like, you did it wrong because you don't care.
Speaker 2:Right? Or you're not good enough or it doesn't matter to you. You know? And and that ends up being kinda disrespectful, and so young people respond negatively to that kind of presumption. Why don't you talk
Speaker 1:to us about status and respect and how to give those things to our mentees in in a healthy way?
Speaker 2:So in the book, write about this idea that as a society, we've kind of collectively decided that adolescents are immature, that they're shortsighted, that they kind of lack a prefrontal cortex, that their brains are just organs that can't be trusted. And look, I get it, teenagers do crazy stuff get But at the same time, that model, which I call the neurobiological incompetence model, has become this driving metatheory that seems to influence so much of what we do with young people. And I think because of that metatheory of the incompetence model, then we adopt communication styles such as groansplaining, right? And which will now mansplain groansplaining to you, which is just the idea that, you know, we think, oh, I, with my smart adult brain, will just export the contents of my thinking to you with your dumb teenage brain. And if only you would listen to me, then you would make good choices.
Speaker 2:And if you don't make good choices, then that's because you don't care or you weren't listening or, you know, this doesn't matter to you. And so that kind of logic leads us to not ask questions, to not be curious. Because if you think someone's brain is deficient and, you know, pointless, then there's no real use in trying to understand somebody's perspective.
Speaker 1:I know so many of the kids that we spend time with, they just want your respect. They just want you to see them as someone who is capable, someone who is competent. Yeah. And so I know the best way to get them to not pay attention to me is to say, hey, man. You're acting like a kid.
Speaker 1:You're immature. You're this. But I think that our our our kids are way more intelligent than we think they are, and they understand just, like, there's, like, a whole lot more than we think.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, think that so just to get back to your previous question, the reason I was talking about the incompetence model is it causes us to communicate disrespectfully to young people. And then when we're disrespectful, like we talk down to them and grow and splain, then they disengage in the way you were just describing, right? That's the best way to shut off their motivation, which in turn feeds into that incompetence model because we're like, I told you clearly that this was bad for your health and you didn't listen to me and therefore you're dumb and you don't care. And then that comes across as even more disrespectful.
Speaker 2:And so the way to flip it is to say, no, actually, the adolescent brain isn't like eternally dumb and competent. Instead, it's like developing still, and it's developing specifically as a way to strategically be better at creating a kind of social success and a social self, which is another way of saying that the adolescent brain is pursuing feelings related to status and respect. And so what we need to do is to figure out how to reframe things so that instead of framing behavioral requests in a disrespectful way, you wanna frame it in a more respectful way so that the young person kind of willingly complies with it.
Speaker 1:I just think it's so awesome that you got to work with doctor Carol Dweck, and she has amazing stuff. And so can you kind of talk about what are the different kinds of mindsets that a mentor can have?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in a framework that, yes, I'd been developing with Carol Dweck, what we try to do is shift from the mindset of the kid or the mindset of the learner or the or the athlete or whatever to the mindset of like the leader. So instead of thinking about, for example, students' mindsets, we're instead thinking about, you know, the teachers' mindsets, the coaches' mindsets, or whatever. And then we started thinking, all right, well, if a teacher is creating a fixed mindset culture, is it just because they have a fixed mindset personally? What we found is that that's not exactly the case.
Speaker 2:That really what's happening is that teachers are creating growth mindset cultures because they're doing growth mindset actions and vice versa for fixed mindset cultures and fixed mindset actions. But the reason why they're doing that in part is because teachers have a flawed belief about what kids need. And one flawed belief is what I call an enforcer mindset. And this is the idea that what kids need is strict discipline to kind of control their unruly shortsighted, impulsive, and selfish ways. And so from the enforcer side, then it's what's called yell, tell, blame, and shame.
Speaker 2:And so this is a very much like a kind of authoritarian dictatorship type approach. And the other type of error is what I call a protector mindset. And this is the idea that you are trying to protect someone from distress. And you're saying, look, I know it's been really hard. Maybe you're really traumatized.
Speaker 2:You're really stressed out. Let's make it easy for you. Or let's give you step by step progress so that you build your confidence and your self esteem. And I understand why people do that, but ultimately that makes kids afraid. It feels makes them feel like we don't believe in them.
Speaker 2:And that comes across as a disrespectful thing that young people react negatively to. And so that gives rise to a kind of third alternative. So if the first one is all standards, no support, enforce our mindset. And the second is all support, no standards, the protector mindset. Then the third is to do both.
Speaker 2:Right? So high standards and high support. And that's what I call the mentor mindset.
Speaker 1:I think it's so great, this mentor mindset. It says here, you know, it's when young people are ready to accomplish impressive things with the right support. It says that they can form an alliance to help them meet Yeah. A high and personally relevant standard. It means if you fail, it's not the end of the world, and they can, receive feedback in a positive way.
Speaker 1:And, man, I I just thought that those mindsets were just absolutely amazing. So thanks a lot for sharing those.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The key in the mentor mindset is, I mean, look, I understand mentoring as a formal role and a formal responsibility, But our argument is that it's more like a philosophy a lot of times. And that even if you don't have a formal role as a mentor, you can still position yourself as a collaborative resource to help someone to get better. And so I might have a mentor mindset, which just means if I ever interact with you, I'm gonna interact with you in a way that supports your long term health and growth and development. And that's a different kind of obligation.
Speaker 2:It's actually a simpler obligation than than, you know, scheduling tea with someone on Tuesdays to talk about their career or whatever else mentoring might be in various settings. Right? Which doesn't mean those things don't have a very important role. But but again, everyone can be a mentor when you define it as a mindset. And, you know, and if that would be great, if our kids are just surrounded by adults who, in a crisis, would know what to say to help our kid be put on the right track again.
Speaker 2:That I wish that would happen.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite things about the book is you just have just a ton of stories, and they're so fascinating. So I have a couple here, but can you just kinda tell us about Marvin and Dexter? So
Speaker 2:this is just the idea that, like, mentoring is not unique to this time and place. Okay? And so this is a story about this teenager who, you know, 10, 11 year old who just hits puberty. And basically the mom stops protecting him from all the other boys. Boy, Melvin, ends up kinda just like watching all the other boys.
Speaker 2:He's not like at home, like getting cuddled by his mom anymore. And it's like kinda terrifying to watch all the older boys just beat the shit out of each other. And but eventually, kind of like an older guy from the group invites Melvin over and kinda he's not like overly nice and affectionate, but just lets him hang around. And just the act of letting him hang around means that he gets to see the social hierarchy up close and personal. And because of that, he learns the subtleties of social dynamics.
Speaker 2:And think about it like there's no textbook you can read about social hierarchy, right? So and adults are like not credible authorities on social hierarchy, right? So like if I try to tell my kids what makes them cool and like attractive to someone they have a crush on, like, I'm not a good source of information. You know? They're not gonna no one's gonna trust me on that.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, I haven't been on a date in twenty five years. Right? And so like the so they have to learn it up close and personal on their own. And that's what this mentor allowed Dexter sorry, the mentor's name was Dexter, the mentor allowed Melvin to do.
Speaker 2:And what I haven't mentioned yet is that all of this story was a story told to me by someone named Reshna Reddy, who's a cultural anthropologist. And she saw this while observing this tribe of chimpanzees in Africa. And so these are all like chimps that I've been describing. But it very much is very related to human scenarios. Like the minute you have to start puberty as a chimp, like your mom ditches you and it's terrifying.
Speaker 2:And the chimp's like looking one way and looking the other. Do I go back with mom and like, is mom gonna kick me out again? Or do I go join these boys who are gonna beat the crap out of me? And like, you know, if you don't have the up close personal contact with the social hierarchy like Dexter gave to Melvin, then you die alone. Or you just die because you try to mate with the wrong person and everyone rips you to shreds.
Speaker 2:Like, it's really violent. It's like it's terrifying. And so the difference between life and death is really mentoring for a lot of these young boys on the Chimp Reservation or whatever it's called. And what that suggests is that when you think about mentoring, it's not just a newfangled invention of something that, you know, is like a product of the self esteem movement or whatever. It's like core to human survival, and it's it's held in common across species, which suggests that there's something valuable that mentors are doing that actually help us as a species to thrive and stay alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just love that story. I was like, oh my gosh. These guys are chimpanzees. Like, this is this is nuts.
Speaker 1:Like, it works with junior high kids. It works with chimpanzees. It works with high school kids. It just works with everything.
Speaker 2:That's a great story. Yeah. Well, I like pointing out that there's an evolutionary basis for this stuff so it doesn't come across like a new age thing you can dismiss. But the minute you start talking about animal studies, people get freaked out. And so I was like, I gotta find another way to write this story.
Speaker 2:So that's why that's why you get the narrative turn in that chapter.
Speaker 1:It was good. Okay. So you talk in your book about how do we make mentees feel like they belong? How do we make them feel like they have a purpose? Do you think that you can talk just a tiny bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think it's a similar answer to both, which is that your your feelings of belonging are the result of the story you tell yourself about your fit in the setting and who values you and who thinks you're competent and who doesn't. And that story is not a lie necessarily. It's not coming out of nowhere. It's coming from experience.
Speaker 2:But it is still a story, which suggests that you could tell yourself a different story about that experience. So classic example is like a freshman starting high school. And you've got brand new friends. You've got new standards. And you got new teachers, different adults to watch out for you.
Speaker 2:And it's easy to feel alone. And then that might be confirmed once you get to your classes and like no one shares their phone number with you, or no one invites you to the study group, or no one invites you to a party anymore, or whatever. And so there are different ways to interpret that same set of examples. Like one is, I am a loser. He'll never have any friends.
Speaker 2:Right? Makes it feel like he can't change. And another is, this is a common but temporary bad thing that can improve and change over time if I take the right steps. And the latter ends up being a more optimistic story. And so we don't think of belonging as something like you either have or don't have or something that like is determined, you know, by policy from an administrator or whatever.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes, it's like a story you've told yourself about your experiences and your projections of how they'll go future. Purpose is similar too. It's like but it's a different kind of story. It's more like what is the meaning behind what I'm doing? Like what is the point of it all?
Speaker 2:And tragically, kids are hardly ever asked what the point of stuff is and hardly ever told. Like you I had a friend, Erica Patel, who's a USC psychology professor, and she sat in the back of classes and counted the percent of time where teachers explain the reason for the lesson in the school. Like, why are you doing linear functions? And she was trying to analyze how explanations of a purpose predicted other good stuff. And she couldn't do that analysis because it almost never happened.
Speaker 2:Like teachers just show up and they're like, here's what we're doing next. And then they never explain why. They just like tell you to do it. So it's kind of amazing. And so the alternative is to actually have a narrative and a conversation about purpose and help kids to tell themselves a story in which the work they're doing now has meaning.
Speaker 1:That's so important. I think one thing that I hear from you, David, just time and time again is that the mentor needs to be patient, and mentor needs to explain. The mentor needs to act with kindness and with just, like, a bunch of grace because it might seem like you are taking it easy on them or anything like that. But honestly, what you're doing is you are making them feel like they matter. And there isn't too many things that are more important for us as mentors than making a kid kind of feel like they matter?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that one thing people get wrong is they think that it's coddling to help a kid discover their purpose, to make them feel like they belong, to give them confidence. And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there's not a choice between being kind, friendly, supportive, and maintaining rigorous standards. That you can do both.
Speaker 2:And in fact, the more that you are supportive, the more they can meet a high standard. And so there's all kinds of authors out there saying, oh, we're coddling kids. You know, the American mind is like turning to mush because of social media and we're giving everyone a comfort llama or whatever. But like, you know, my view is the point of all the support is that there are legitimately high standards that people need to meet if they're going to have a meaningful future in the labor market, right? But with like the advancement of ever more technical skills and the disappearance of all kinds of jobs because of AI and other technological advances, you actually need to know a lot.
Speaker 2:And you need to have uniquely human skills of communication, collaboration, creativity, you know, advanced thinking. And so if you care about young people in our future, then they have to be pushed. And if you do not support them, then they will fail when they're pushed and they will resent us for it. And so it's a false choice to say either rigor or support. One thing I hear a lot is like from college professors, for example, I'll say, look, a kid needs to have a growth mindset, for example, believing they can grow and learn.
Speaker 2:But your grading policies are one and done. It's like you take a test, you get a grade, and you move on. And it's like, how come they cannot retake or redo anything? I'm like, oh, they'll take advantage of me. They'll exploit me if I let them retake the test, or they won't try on the first try.
Speaker 2:I'm like, if they get a zero on the first try, they're not gonna get a 100 like by cramming for three days before the retest. Like that's never going to happen, first of all. So that's a false worry. Second of all, you think that because you have the incompetence model. You fundamentally don't believe in young people.
Speaker 2:You think that they are shortsighted, selfish, trying to get out of work, and, you know, liars and manipulators. And so you're letting your beliefs color how you behave. And last, if your policy is one and done exams, for example, which in your mind means rigor, guess what? You will have fewer people who master the content by the end of the term because you have not accommodated for different learning And there are different learning rates across different people because they know different stuff and they some people like it all clicks at the last second and other people like they get it linearly. Other people will get it right away and then they coast.
Speaker 2:If you're only allowing people who get it right away to to get an a and to master the content, then you've limited the total number of people who meet your level of rigor. So you actually haven't upheld a standard of rigor for everyone. You've just excluded people. And so what I argue is like, no, maintain the intellectual standard and the rigor for contribution, but then be really flexible on logistics. Like, who cares if they redo the tests?
Speaker 2:Do they master it by the end? Like, that's what you're accountable for. That's what, if you're a high school teacher, that's why the state government, you know, allows you to take the tax dollars to run the school so that more children have mastered the content. And if they haven't, you haven't done your job. So stop hiding behind this idea that rigor means being inflexible and uncaring and never smiling before Thanksgiving and making everyone afraid of you.
Speaker 2:That's not rigor. Rigor is everybody meets the most demanding standard because you support everyone in the unique way they need to be supported. And that's the mentor mindset idea, basically.
Speaker 1:That's good, David. Thanks so much for sharing that, man. Okay. So, as we end, right, like, target audience is adults who spend time with kids, specifically kids who have experienced kind of some harder things. What is one piece of advice that you would share with a new mentor?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I mean, I think that the the first thing we do when we train people is we have people interrogate their beliefs. Like what are things that you learned from culture or from society as it relates to the young person you care about that could be influencing how you're going to interact with them. And, you know, if you come from a deficit mentality of, you know, this kid is suffering, they don't have anything and they need me to come save them. It's like, well, you've already decided that they're incompetent and that therefore you're going to do everything for them.
Speaker 2:And so then when you leave or when you're done with whatever time you spend with them, you haven't left anything behind. You haven't prepared to transfer that skill for the future. And like, I I mean, I get it. I've been I've been a formal mentor in Big Brothers Big Sisters. I've been an informal mentor.
Speaker 2:I've been a teacher. You know, I've I I lived and worked in an orphanage in Chile. I ran program like, I've I've been exposed to all different versions of different beliefs people have. And in general, I think if you don't interrogate those and see what they're causing you to do, then you'll end up getting stuck in practices that are not going to work and you can't see the alternative because you don't realize that there's another way to think. So that's kind of the first thing.
Speaker 2:And the second is how are you aligning your language with what you believe? Like, do you assume that everyone will interpret your behavior in the best possible light at all times? Right? So a lot of people think. They walk around like, you know, why am I a teacher?
Speaker 2:Because I wanna change the world and I care about kids. And it should be obvious to them. So anytime I give you a C, it's my way of changing the world and they should thank me for it. And my kids are like, no, this teacher hates me because they gave me a C. And they hate me because they chose to enter a profession where they could make children cry.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, that's what they think. And right? Or they're trying to catch kids or they don't believe in the next generation, so they're trying to discipline them. You know, kids are gonna bring their most negative possible interpretations unless we're clear about the opposite.
Speaker 2:So don't presume that everyone looks at your intentions as pure. Instead, be clear. And the last is anytime you have the possibility of setting a standard with your policies, then do it strategically, you know. So we it's kind of a pyramid of your beliefs, your language of communication, and your policies procedures. And you kinda need all three of those things, but those are all things that anyone could do right away.
Speaker 1:Awesome, David. The book is 10 to 25, the science of motivating young people by doctor David Yeager. David, if people would to get ahold of you, tell them how to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we have a training program for educators on the mentor mindset called the FUSE program. So f u s e, and you can just Google FUSE UT Austin, and we're pretty excited about that. And then the other is just my website for the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute at UT Austin. And so we have a lot of resources there as well.
Speaker 1:David, thank you so much, man, for your time, and thank you so much for this book. It's amazing. I encourage everyone to pick it up. And remember, You Mentor. Thanks for tuning in to the You Can Mentor podcast.
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Speaker 1:Thank you. You can mentor.