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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED

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True Grit

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March 2012 | Volume 69 | Number 6
Reading: The Core Skill Pages 84-85

Thomas R. Hoerr

Every child needs to encounter frustration and failure to learn to step back, reassess, and try again.

Should an educator ever cause a student to feel frustrated, or even to fail?

You may have raised your eyebrows or reread my first sentence just to be sure that you didn't misunderstand. After all, an affirmative answer to that question runs counter to so much of our training. Don't we always work to help our students succeed? Designing for student frustration and failure is unheard of. And that's unfortunate because the answer to my question is yes.

As important as scholastic preparation is (and it is important), it is only part of what students need to succeed in life. Howard Gardner's personal intelligences, Daniel Goleman's emotional intelligence, and Carol Dweck's mindsets all reflect the fact that our attitudes are even more important than our skills.

We know and understand some of this, of course. We work to help our students have a positive attitude about school, be good citizens, and accept others. Every teacher values student effort and responsibility. Yet an overlooked quality-one that is crucial in achieving success in the real world-is grit.

My faculty has been talking about grit since fall, after we read a New York Times article by Paul Tough called "What If the Secret to Success Is Failure?" Tough argues that success in the real world depends on far more than scholastic preparation. He argues-and my faculty agrees-that learning to respond to failure is essential to success.

Granted, we have students who struggle and whose school experiences are difficult. We create opportunities for success for those students and help them see that they can achieve. Every child needs to feel that learning is possible and probable.

For some of our students, however, learning comes easily. These are the children who are on the honor roll, play on athletic teams, participate in drama or debate, and hold offices in student government. These students come to school expecting to succeed because, well, that's what they do. We have a different obligation to these students. We need to be sure that they sometimes encounter frustration and failure.

Those are loaded terms. No one likes to be frustrated, and no one wants to fail. But every child needs to encounter frustration and failure to learn to step back, reassess, and try again-and again. It surely seems odd and perhaps heartless to create scenarios in which students are not successful, but how can they learn to overcome adversity if they haven't experienced it?

As educators, part of our job is to ensure that every child finds success, and an important part of finding success is knowing how to respond to failure. As soccer star Mia Hamm said, "Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it." People who have not learned to respond well to frustration and failure are likely to choose paths without much risk or challenge and thus destine themselves to a life of predictability, safety, and mediocrity.

Researcher Angela Duckworth, cited in Tough's article, showed what a predictor grit is for success in any setting, from elementary school to West Point Academy. She says that grit "entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress." Indeed, within a group of equally talented students, athletes, or artists, the level of grit may be the single best predictor for success. Hillary Clinton, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, and Maya Lin might not have had much in common to discuss over dinner, but they are each known for having an extraordinary amount of grit. (You can see Duckworth talking about grit in a TED presentation at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaeFnxSfSC4.)

How and when to help students develop grit has been an exciting topic among my faculty. We begin by ensuring that every student confronts his or her limitations, often through rethinking how hard and where we challenge our students. For example, in addition to using multiple intelligences theory as a tool to help children learn through their strengths, we recognize that we can also require students to work in areas that are unfamiliar and less comfortable for them.

Parent education also plays an important role. We want parents to understand our rationale, and we need them to support us in our efforts to take their children out of their comfort zones.

Finally, if we want our students to develop grit, we need to do so, too. We need to take ourselves out of our own comfort zones and learn how to respond to frustration and failure. And just maybe we'll develop grit, too!

Endnotes

Tough, P. (2011, September 14). What if the secret to success is failure? The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2004). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1087-1101.

Thomas R. Hoerr is head of school at the New City School, 5209 Waterman Ave., St. Louis, MO 63108. He is the author of The Art of School Leadership (ASCD, 2005) and School Leadership for the Future (NAIS Press, 2008).

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March 2012 | Volume 69 | Number 6 Reading: The Core Skill Pages 84-85 Thomas R. Hoerr Every child needs to encounter frustration and failure to learn to step back, reassess, and try again. Should an educator ever cause a student to feel frustrated, or even to fail?

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2013/12/30/the-eight-characteristics-of-effective-school-leaders/#4ed0639b2576

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How can coaches be successful when coaching technology resources?  Check out these resources!
http://www.edutopia.org/practice/instructional-coaching-driving-meaningful-tech-integration

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What Is Successful Technology Integration?

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What Is Successful Technology Integration?

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http://www.edutopia.org/technology-integration-guide-description
Christine's Resource

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Christine's Quote:

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Teacher researchers pause each morning as they walk into their classrooms and ask, "What will my students teach me today?" To answer that question, they listen to and watch their students engage in authentic work; collect work samples, photographs, and transcripts to document what their students say and do; and use that information to evolve their practice as they celebrate and support the voices and experiences of the children they teach. In this sense, teacher researchers are innovators, curriculum drivers, agents of school change, and directors of their own professional development.

Support and Growth

As a doctoral student, I participated on the Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum Teacher Researcher Team led by Jane Hansen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and Reading Hall of Fame Member. For years, in preparation for our teacher research team meetings, I selected a piece of student writing that spoke to me. It would be a piece that made me scratch my head and ask, "What can I learn as a writer and teacher of writing from this young author?" or "What do I need to do next to support her growth?" I would capture these contemplations in a one-pager. That one-pager was exactly that, one page, and its content was reflective of my immediate classroom experience. During our small group meetings, every teacher researcher brought her one-pager, shared her contemplations, and elicited response from her team. We met weekly for one and a half hours. We took our work and time together seriously, because we had an internal charge to grow.

Diversity is essential in creating strong and dynamic teacher research teams. Each year our six- to eight-member group spanned across ages, gender, years of experience, grades, and content areas. Difference expanded the vocabulary of the room. As we heard our fellow researchers use new words and frameworks to discuss their experiences, we began to internalize those new ways of thinking, and thus pushed our own understandings of who and how we teach. Coming to know students as individuals and opening spaces for them to grow in their own directions is difficult work. Teachers' voices and contemplations need support. That is what teacher research teams do; they provide a place to lean and space to explore and expand.

The Best Tools

I have three primary tools that I use as a teacher researcher:

1. My first tool is my spiral notebook. Here I jot notes while I conference with students, tape in samples of their work, and record insights and observations. Each evening, I reflect on my notes and use them to plan for tomorrow.

2. My second tool is my iPhone. Throughout the day, I take pictures and videos of my students' writing samples, projects, and engineering feats. I often interview them as they share their innovative thinking. These visuals sometimes go in my spiral notebook, sometimes in my Evernote app, and often on my blog to parents. I also use them when I share my students' thinking and creations at our research team meetings and when I present at conferences or write about my practice. The visuals serve as an outward product of our classroom's evolution.

3. My third and most important tool is my teacher research team. These colleagues focus me and serve as a sounding board and support network for my contemplations in the classroom.

Tapping Into the Power

The initial power of being a teacher researcher illuminates as you live the classroom life beside your students and realize that they have much to teach you. As you start to listen and record their thinking, you are amazed at the work that is happening in your room. Because of your amazement, you begin to more purposely structure your classroom to meet your students' needs. And because of that new structure, your students' learning is intensified, and their talk and work starts to surpass your own expectations. That power of being a teacher researcher is then clarified and intensified as you sit and discuss your observations and insights with your own teacher research team and receive their response.

Today, I am a classroom teacher and the research coach for our Saints Action Research team, part of our school's Center for the Study of Boys. In that role, I lead a team of seven teacher researchers who teach across grade levels and content areas, researching the work that gets done in their classroom, on the field, and in the studio.

This year I challenge you to join (or perhaps start) a teacher research team. Invite the experiences in your classroom, the questions in your head, and the support of your team to become your most powerful professional development. After all, the most effective curriculum is the one that follows the students, and the most successful professional development is the one that grows from the questions in your classroom.

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Teacher as Researcher: The Ultimate Professional Development | Edutopia

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Teacher researchers pause each morning as they walk into their classrooms and ask, "What will my students teach me today?" To answer that question, they listen to and watch their students engage in authentic work; collect work samples, photographs, and transcripts to document what their students say and do; and use that information to evolve their practice as they celebrate and support the voices and experiences of the children they teach.

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https://piktochart.com/
https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/

http://www.postermywall.com/

Create your own info-graphics!

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Having an effective conference.

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Professional Learning Resources for Teacher and Leader Effectiveness

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Lead by example

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Beginning Teachers

Beginning teachers have three or less years of classroom experience. They want mentoring and guidance. Many have stated that they require support around lesson planning, resources, classroom management, and pacing classroom time. Beginning teachers are also brave and want to dive in, so knowing that their colleagues trust them in and out of the classroom carries a lot of importance. Additionally, they need to feel included and supported by their colleagues, which means that congeniality and collaboration among coworkers, along with having a go-to person for questions, ranks high with this group. I recommend these steps to meet beginning teacher needs:

1. Create a formal onboarding process at your school.

Put logistical information in an easily accessible place. This could be as simple as a binder or digital folder with how-to information for various procedures, templates of needed forms, maps, schedules, etc. Allow beginning teachers to enter the classrooms of their more seasoned colleagues. Making time for practices like instructional rounds help beginning teachers get ideas for their practice, as well as allowing for reflection on where they are and where they hope to go. If you have an instructional coach on staff, require him or her to work closely with that individual. Actively creating opportunities for beginning teachers to continue learning, reflect on their practice, and contemplate their growth increases job satisfaction and teacher retention (Scherer, 2012).

2. Choose and pair mentors and mentees wisely.

Know your veteran teachers' personalities, strengths, and challenges. Would it be wise to pair like-content areas, or does it matter? How much time should mentors and mentees spend together? Are those able to mentor also able to commit as fully as you'd like? Know your resources and plan wisely for the outcomes that you'd like to see. In addition, set aside time for mentoring. Educators often become so entrenched in their daily responsibilities that it can be difficult to mentor effectively, so designate time in the schedule for mentoring, collaboration, and relationship building.

3. Continue mentoring past the first year.

One challenge for beginning teachers is a drastic shift in mentoring after their first year in the classroom. Many reported receiving less mentoring when they still felt it necessary. One teacher admitted, "Just because I have been teaching for two years doesn't mean I still don't need the same level of support I received my first year. I still struggle in many areas and need the guidance of a mentor."

Middle-of-the-Road Teachers

These are teachers who have spent 4-10 years in the classroom. They desire support and collaboration, but in a different capacity than a beginning teacher: Middle-of-the-road teachers are comfortable enough in their careers that they want to branch out, explore new ideas, and take risks, but they also want feedback from their colleagues as they do so. Relationship building, while still important, takes on a different aspect. Not only do these teachers want a continued relationship with their peers, but they also feel it necessary to know their administrators on a personal level. This is how to meet their needs:

1. Use protocols in PLCs.

Protocols help shape focused and productive conversations. A lesson-tuning protocol (PDF) not only lends itself to shared learning and practices, but also allows the presenter to walk away with effective, timely feedback on both new and older lessons and assignments. Other protocols lend themselves to guiding PLCs through looking at student work (PDF) and data (PDF), keeping educators on track throughout the process.

2. Get to know faculty members personally.

One administrator that I knew invited three or four faculty members to meet with her once a month for 45 minutes. This was her opportunity for getting to know her staff as people. They would talk about their personal lives, families, and hobbies -- basically, anything but work. This sent her staff the message that knowing them as individuals was a priority to her. If there isn't time for meeting with everyone personally, make space for the faculty to come together once a month to socialize and relax while enjoying snacks and drinks.

Veteran Teachers

Veteran teachers have spent ten or more years in the classroom. They want autonomy to shape their students' learning, while feeling that administrators trust them to continue bringing powerful teaching into their classroom even as they juggle outside responsibilities. In addition, many veteran teachers also desire leadership opportunities that aren't necessarily administrative but still allow them to step up and contribute. They also want more personalization, from how they are treated by administrators to professional learning opportunities. Lastly, veteran teachers need support and understanding around all the things that they have to juggle, both in and out of the classroom. This is how to meet their needs:

1. Ask veterans what they want.

It seems simple, but just asking veterans what opportunities they wish they had can go a long way. Follow up by exploring together how these opportunities could be fulfilled. Also, keep in mind that veterans can help in a variety of leadership capacities, from sitting on interview committees to leading school improvement teams.

2. Support veterans in personalized learning.

Support teachers as they explore different avenues of learning, and discuss how their journey could be used to support others. For example, teachers could lead a professional learning session around what they learned at a workshop or class, thus sharing their knowledge, skill, and practice with others.

Learning and meeting the personalized needs of teachers can be time consuming, but well worth the time. When teachers feel valued and heard, they are more effective and likely to stay in education.

How do you connect with teachers? I invite you to continue the conversation in the comments section.

Notes

Scherer, M. (2012, May). "The challenges of supporting new teachers." Educational Leadership, 69(8), pp.18-23.

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Personalizing for Teacher Needs | Edutopia

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Beginning teachers have three or less years of classroom experience. They want mentoring and guidance. Many have stated that they require support around lesson planning, resources, classroom management, and pacing classroom time. Beginning teachers are also brave and want to dive in, so knowing that their colleagues trust them in and out of the classroom carries a lot of importance.

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http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/gift-of-failure/

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Patton Rocks

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"Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer." Muhammad Ali

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Never underestimate the power of an individual's actions to the greater good.

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Double Click to create a new post! Please add a quote about Leadership, and a resource.

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http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/tech-training-for-teachers/

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http://www.edutopia.org/blog/reacher-researcher-ultimate-professional-development-dorothy-suskind?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

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Different Teaches in Different Places--how do we respond to their needs?

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Free digital issue of Ed Leadership

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Educational Leadership - Summer Free 2016 - 2

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Educational Leadership is a magazine for educators by educators and includes among its readers principals, teachers, and administrators of every grade level and subject area. With a circulation of 175,000, EL is acknowledged throughout the world as an authoritative and readable forum of discussion about practices, policies, research, and trends affecting prekindergarten through higher education.

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8 Tips

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You might find this video if you are helping teachers integrate technology.

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It's not how we got here or whose fault it is. The question is: What will we do about it?