Setting a Precedent for American Aid; The Freedmen’s Bureau

Authored by Marion Ward

Registers and Letters Received by the Commissioner, Indexes and Registers, Register 14, Jan. 1–July 31, 1869.

On March 3, 1865, the War Department of the United States established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands; it has since come to be known as the Freedmen’s Bureau (National Archives 2021). Facing the aftermath of the Civil War and the havoc it wreaked on the American economic system, President Andrew Johnson worked alongside Congress to create the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was a federal agency that was established for the purpose of promoting the social welfare of the recently freed population of enslaved African Americans (Hatfield 2020).

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Growth Mindset Interventions as Tools for Increasing Student Achievement

Authored by Paula Leahy Welch

Research indicates that student interventions that focus on growth mindset can help improve grade point averages, especially in schools with strong peer support. The article pictured is being added as an educator resource to the Growth Mindset Resource List in the collection of the Springfield Public Schools Libraries (Massachusetts).

Since Carol Dweck first published her research around the concept of growth mindset more than 20 years ago, social scientists, corporations, and educators have been searching for ways to apply the theory to obtain practical benefits. “Numerous studies have found that students fare better if they believe that their intellectual abilities can be developed—a belief called growth mindset—than if they believe that their intellectual abilities are immutable—a belief called fixed mindset” (Claro, Paunesku, and Dweck 2016, 8664). 

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