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Strategies for Cultivating Resilience and Grit to Maintain Motivation Strategies for Evaluating Learning Through Feedback, Reflection,
Name:
Goal-Achievement Process Plan
Date:
What systems do you have to put in place to achieve this goal?
Goal: I will turn in 100 percent of my assignments on time during this nineweek grading period.
My planner is on my desk, and I have written down each assignment.
I used my homework folder to transport assignments to and from school. I set aside time today to do homework and study.
I looked at my planner to make sure I have all needed materials before leaving school.
I kept my homework folder on my desk to remind myself to turn in my work, and then I turned in my assignments.
FIGURE 2.6: Goal-achievement process plan.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/studentengagement for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Students ask themselves, “Am I completing the process steps each day to work toward achieving my goal? If not, what is going wrong, and how can I fix it?”
Strategies for Cultivating Resilience and Grit to Maintain Motivation
When students are trying something new, they don’t always succeed right away. Instead, success is the result of steady motivation, persistence, and continued effort over time. It is a measure of resilience and the ability to pick oneself back up after failure. Psychologist Angela Duckworth (2016) found that intelligence was not the main factor determining whether her students were academically successful. Her best performers didn’t have the highest IQ scores or the most talent, and some of her students with the best IQ scores weren’t her top performers.
Duckworth (2016) notes that in education, teachers tend to focus on measuring IQ, but that in life, one’s level of motivation and perseverance also determines success. Duckworth (2013) calls this determination grit, or the quality of having the “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.” She developed a grit scale (see https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale) to measure student grit and discovered students with more grit are more likely to graduate. When students understand that most people who have tried something difficult face setbacks and bumps in the road, they are more likely to persist when they face their own difficulties in reaching their goals.
In his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author, journalist, and public speaker Paul Tough (2012) explains that students successful in college are not always the same ones who had made the best grades in high school. Instead, they are the ones who were able to develop other skills like “optimism and resilience and social agility. They were the students who were able to recover from bad grades and resolve to do better next time” (Tough, 2012, p. 52). They bounce back and continue to remain focused when they have a “break up or fight with their parents” (Tough, 2012, p. 52). They seek out help when they need it. They stay focused on their goals even when more potentially fun distractions or activities come up, like hanging out with friends, going to a game, or seeing a movie (Tough, 2012).
Tough (2012) goes on to clarify that, in a sense, developing grit and perseverance is about cultivating what psychologist Martin Seligman (2006) refers to as learned optimism. When students experience a negative event, they must learn to avoid reacting to it as permanent, personal, and pervasive. The ability to persist is dependent on the ability to attribute failure to certain changeable characteristics you can control. It also depends on conscientiousness or the ability to continue to try hard in the absence of any material incentive, even when a task becomes difficult, repetitive, or boring (Tough, 2012).
Before we begin introducing the concept of grit to our students, it is important to consider that many children come to school from lives and communities where they face trauma, adversity, violence, exploitation, systemic racism, and poverty. Educator Bettina L. Love warns that removing history and social context from the discussion about grit is dangerous as many students have been forced to become gritty in order to survive (Love, 2019). In these situations, teachers can help students realize that grit is a quality they may already possess. Educators can help students think of personal, historical, and cultural examples that illustrate grit in the face of challenge and adversity. Researcher Ethan Ris (as cited in Strauss, 2016) also points out that we have to be careful not to use the concept of grit to “romanticize hardship” or as a reason to target activities focused on cultivating grit exclusively toward low-income or minority children who often already demonstrate large quantities of grit each day. In addition, it is important to point out that teaching about grit should not be used as a way to blame students who experience hardship for their difficult circumstances or to teach students compliance and conformity in the face of unjust systems (Strauss, 2016). We cannot teach students about grit and then ignore pressing social issues that impact their ability to grow toward their true potential. As Love (2019) puts it, students “deserve the right to use their grit to thrive, not just survive.” Since persistence helps individuals to achieve their goals, students can learn a lot from stories of people who demonstrated resilience when faced with
difficulty or hardship. However, it is important to note that some situations are not worth persisting through. Students must be equipped with the strategies to discern which tasks align with their values and are worth continuing to focus their time and attention on.
Students in grades 3–12 watch Duckworth’s (2013) TED Talk, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance to understand what grit is and why they are learning about it. All students can read stories or watch videos and interviews appropriate for their age and grade level about gritty people from history or pop culture like Michael Jordan, Thomas Edison, Malala Yousafzai, Barbara Corcoran, Oprah Winfrey, John Lewis, or Bethany Hamilton. The school librarian may be able to put together a set of books appropriate for your grade level on this topic so students can read independently, in book clubs, as a small group, or as a whole class. There are also many fiction and nonfiction stories students can read, or the teacher can read to the class, to further explore the characteristics and attributes of people who persevere in the face of difficulty.
Ask students to consider what would have happened if the person (or character) had given up when they first encountered difficulty.
The following activity is based on the work of Duckworth (2016) and helps students learn more about how people they know persevere in working toward their goals.
Conducting Grit Interviews (Grades K–12)
Students choose a person they know like a parent, grandparent, friend, or neighbor and ask them to tell the story of how they achieved a big goal. Grit interviews are a great way to see demonstrations of perseverance in a student’s real life. This will help students understand that even adults make mistakes and have difficulties. With continued effort and hard work, students will use what they learn from these hardships to reach their own goals.
INSTRUCTIONS
See the following sections to learn how to adapt this activity to different grade ranges. Do this activity whenever students need motivation to keep going.
EARLY ELEMENTARY (GRADES K—2)
Students watch age-appropriate videos or read books about people who have displayed grit.
Students interview someone they know about their journey to achieve a personal goal.
Students come up with some of their own questions that directly relate to the person they are speaking with but should also consider asking this person the following. • “What goal did you set?” • “What were some obstacles you encountered as you were working toward your goal?” • “How did you overcome these obstacles?”
• “What helped you keep going when you were having a hard day?” • “When did you achieve your goal, and how did it feel?”
Students put their interview in a traditional news article format with a picture and write-up. Younger students in third through fifth grades have a picture and the following questions below it, with space to write in each answer. Students can also consider doing video interviews.
Ask students, “How did the famous people you read about or the person you interviewed overcome obstacles? How can you use this information to help yourself the next time you face an obstacle?”
Turning Disappointments Into Opportunities for Growth (Grades K–12)
It is important for students to understand when they try something, they may not always succeed right away. Everyone must learn to overcome obstacles and try again to move toward their values and goals. Discuss with students their different reactions to disappointments that they may perceive as failures. Students use this activity to help develop resilience. This activity can also help students understand that the way they react to disappointments (or feedback) determines whether they will get stuck and stay the same or use failure as an opportunity for learning and growth. This strategy shows students that quitting isn’t the only option if they don’t succeed the first time.
INSTRUCTIONS
Ask students, “Look back at the values exercise. What is one value you are working toward? What are some examples of ways you demonstrate that value?”
EARLY ELEMENTARY (GRADES K—2)
The teacher models the following activity for students as a whole group, using the classroom values and different actions students could take to demonstrate those values.
Students make an outline of their hand and wrist to create a “tree with branches.” In the sky above the tree, they write a value they are working toward, such as doing their best. They write their name on the trunk. As a class or individually, students brainstorm ways to display the quality of doing your best. For example, students complete all their practice problems to the best of their ability. They listen to the teacher. They pay close attention. They correct their problems if they made a mistake. Each of these statements goes on a branch pointing upward toward the sky.
Students ask themselves, “Do I have a value with five real-life examples of that value?”
Point out to students that if a storm comes along, one of the branches could break off the tree. Just like the tree, sometimes when students are reaching and stretching, they get “knocked down” or they try something and it doesn’t work. Ask students the following.
