Teaching Grit, Resilience, and Perseverance

In today's society, teaching has become more than just academics. Academics are only achieved when students have been taught how to learn. This is more than just "study skills." With new information at one's fingertips, a sense of delayed gratification is hard to come by in most young adults. Growing synapses requires one to process information and adapt accordingly. Therefore, you must do more than just obtain information. You must use it regularly. The old phrase, "practice makes perfect" has become increasingly more important in a society where you can simply dictate the sentence you would like typed into Microsoft Word without ever putting your fingers to the keys.

In the past several years, there has been a lot of literature published and professional development provided to teachers on how to teach "perseverance." Perseverance is the concept that one should keep pushing forward, even when things are challenging. Teaching perseverance is teaching learning as a process rather than the product and that failure is acceptable. In fact, one can even learn from failure. Carol Dweck has become an institutional name with her research on developing growth mindsets. Paul Tough's (no pun intended) book titled, "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character," has become a popular summer read for many teachers and parents.

As a teacher and a parent, I often find myself asking, "Why must we spend so much time teaching perseverance? Grit? How to be curious?"Mind you, I find them invaluable skills and necessary for true learning and academics to occur. However, when I reflect on my own childhood, I never recall anyone needing to teach me these skills. My brothers and I spent hours exploring our backyard, collecting bugs, and asking endless questions of our parents. My classmates and I would read something interesting and instantly our imaginations would be sparked. You would later find us sitting in a corner of the classroom weaving together a story full of colorful characters and plot scenarios.

In my own classrooms, I have witnessed similar moments of inspiration. These moments are what keep me teaching. When the lesson book gets put aside because the students have found inspiration and taken the reigns. I have also fell prey to the silent stare. When I have to coax students in order to get a few simple "I wonder" statements. I have found myself teaching new lessons on how to ask good questions or reflect on new concepts and ideas. In order to have a classroom discussion around a novel or short text, many students need explicit instruction using sentence starters and dialogue prompts for sharing their ideas, text evidence, and literary themes. Classroom walls become plastered with anchor charts providing a framework for critical thinking and analysis.

In many ways, I believe we have moved in a positive direction by providing an increasingly diverse student population with the skills necessary to succeed in an evolving world. At the same time, I believe that we have missed the mark. Perhaps the reason we are now teaching these skills is because opportunities for learning grit, resilience, and perseverance have slowly eroded from our daily lives and routines. Exchanged with opportunities for convenience, ease, and instant gratification. If our environment or "nature" plays a role in intelligence, could it be said that we have created an environment that nurtures convenience over learning? Alternatively, could our environment could be shaping a generation of learners who adapt more readily to changing information and systems?