Rejuvenation: Growth Mindset and Answering Questions

Hi All,

This week I finally figured out something. I wasn't doing what I ask my students to do every day. I don't have a growth mindset.
I recently bought Carol Dweck's book in order to try to improve my classroom environment. I didn't realize the impact it would have on me personally. My disillusionment is a product of the feeling that I cannot change anything. I lost my drive, and now I'm determined to change this.
For example, I cannot change the fact the county uses Canvas, but I decided to make my own website through Weebly. It's fudging the growth mindset idea a little bit (in which the best scenario is that I should actually learn the new program), but this is definitely a step in the right direction. And, I had fun doing it!
Look at my new website!

Now onto the questions I thought I could try to answer:

How to address the lack of writing in social studies?
Implementing writing and reading core standards in Social Studies classrooms is so incredibly important. I didn't understand what this meant until I took a workshop that taught me the CER method and showed me HOW to use writing in my classroom. I later went to the Core Advocates workshop and I honestly feel much more equipped to teach and evaluate writing. This was a long process, and it was extremely helpful to have the ELA teacher on my team as my mentor. She taught me how she teaches annotations and how she grades her CERs. The dialogue between a SS/ELA teacher is a must, so there is consistency.

Role/place of writing in “content” classes?
Relationship between writing and thinking?
I thought my answer to both these questions kind of coincide. In SS, I usually have students read several primary and secondary sources on a controversial topic, then have them choose a point to argue using evidence they gathered. For example, last year I had them write about whether we should have dropped the atomic bombs. There are clearly two schools of thought there (historically and presently), and it challenges students to argue using perspective, while using writing standards.  

How to incentivize or motivate students to care without the ranking/grading? What works to motivate?
It is extremely difficult to get kids to CARE about learning to the point where you don't need to grade. 
However, one time I did a CER question that asked what was the true motivations for explorers, (3 Gs, remember those?). I had one student in particular that felt really strongly about how the explorers were in it for the money and not religious reasons, and wrote an entire page on it (well beyond the expected length). That leads me to believe that if the topic is controversial enough or something they really care about/have strong feelings for, then they may be motivated to respond without a rigid grading/ranking system. 
Discussions are easy to get them to do without grading, especially with the political climate we're in. They want to talk about current events. As long as you give them articles to prepare them with real facts, then I know you can have a good, deep, meaning discussion without grading or ranking. And perhaps a reflection writing response after? I can see them doing that without grading as well. As long as they're passionate enough about the topic.