What are you talking about? I do my work!

I hear too often the kids talk about their grades in terms of work. "I do my work, I never do the other teachers work, and I didn't used to do your work but I'm doing it now, so why did you fail me?" But it isn't about work it is about learning, and this mindset that the "work will let me pass" is about as flawed as communism. The kid who is focused on work will come across a worksheet that he doesn't understand and just write something so that the teacher can't say "you didn't do your work." A kid focused on learning will call the teacher over and say they can't do their work because they need to get help. if two students get a failed quiz handed back, the learner will look back to see what he did wrong and why its wrong, the work focused student will take it as a personal insult from the teacher and look to see if the teacher made any mistakes in grading. The worker will get good grades because they believe they are naturally smart and that the class was easy while the learner will get good grades because they mastered all of the content covered. Conversely, the learner will look at their bad grades as an inability to understand the content, while the worker will look at bad grades as evidence of their own inability to do well in school. Their two mindsets set them up for failure or success down the road. Its hard to turn the worker into the learner, but its better to try to do that then to pass the worker along and let them catch heartache when they really don't understand.