By Melanie Lowenberg.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, my journey to IBM began in 2006 in a classroom in rural North Carolina, United States. I was a recent college graduate standing at the front of the room with a marker and big plans, eager to teach my students but not quite sure how to begin. My students hailed from six countries, and many spoke English as a second language. All of them were behind from an academic perspective. My students needed a great teacher from day one, and I was just learning the basics.

As I struggled through that first year – often taking one step forward, then two steps back – something shifted radically in the way I viewed the situation. I adopted a growth mindset. I first learned this concept from the book Mindset by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Adopting a growth mindset means…