Henry E. Huntington Middle School - San Marino, CA

Survival in the Darwinian sense requires adaptation, and Huntington Middle School (along with every other school) had to pivot from in-class to online teaching. Did we make mistakes? Of course. Did we survive? Yes. But that answer sounds grim. As a school (or teacher), you want to do more than just "survive" a school year. And in fact, we didn't just survive. In some small ways, we even thrived.

Certainly, the past year-plus of distance learning has been challenging, but Huntington Middle School has thrived in part by embracing a growth mindset. In the past, we have promoted this idea-that every student is capable of challenging tasks; no one is limited in their future abilities-but over this past year-plus, we have had to remind ourselves to apply this same growth mindset to ourselves as we looked in the proverbial mirror (or the very-real Zoom screen).

True, some teachers didn't know Meet could be a proper noun and thought Zoom was an onomatopoeia; others had classrooms already tricked-out with technology, so the digital classroom wasn't as challenging. But what has unified our teachers is their embracing a growth mindset, allowing them to try new things and yes, to make mistakes, because ultimately, they knew they could be successful.