{"id":915,"date":"2014-06-14T19:38:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T19:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/wp\/?p=915"},"modified":"2014-07-16T14:41:11","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T14:41:11","slug":"looking-for-the-teacher-of-grit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/2014\/06\/14\/looking-for-the-teacher-of-grit\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for the Teacher of Grit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in the middle of working on organizing my courses for the Exeter conference in about a week and something I&#8217;m really struggling with is trying to articulate to teachers how they can impart to their students this idea of grit in the PBL classroom. \u00a0So I started doing a little research online (besides looking through all of the books I have read on the subject). \u00a0I took Angela <a href=\"https:\/\/sasupenn.qualtrics.com\/SE\/?SID=SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR\">Duckworth&#8217;s Grit Test<\/a> at her lab&#8217;s website (got a 3.63 grit score- grittier than 60% of other U.S. citizen&#8217;s my age&#8230;hmmm). \u00a0Then I started reading some blog posts of other PBL teachers and writers like here on the <a href=\"http:\/\/maamathedmatters.blogspot.com\/2014\/04\/encouraging-students-to-tinker.html\">MAA&#8217;s blog<\/a> which is trying to encourage math students to tinker with problems or here which is more of an <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/mindshift\/2013\/02\/how-to-foster-grit-tenacity-and-perseverance-an-educators-guide\/\">all-purpose index<\/a> of resources to teaching grit. There was this wonderful video of a teacher in NH who created a neat grit curriculum for her 5th grade class (with Angela Duckworth too)<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/F0qrtsYg6kI?rel=0\" height=\"270\" width=\"480\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>John Larmer of the Buck Institute wrote a really <a href=\"http:\/\/bie.org\/blog\/grit_happens_in_pbl\">nice blog entry<\/a> on how project-based learning fosters grit in students. I even found a nice video of Po Bronson, author of <em>Nurture Shock<\/em> (the book about how parents have failed kids because we don&#8217;t let them fail). \u00a0This is a short video of how Mr. Bronson believes we should be allowing kids to fail these days.<br \/>\n<object width=\"560\" height=\"315\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/9kVTM1fEBPs?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed width=\"560\" height=\"315\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/9kVTM1fEBPs?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>He says (in so many words) that if kids grow up without learning how to fail, they will become risk-averse. \u00a0This is what I am finding in my classroom at times. \u00a0The risk-averse kid combined with the fixed mindset kid, combined with the &#8220;I-have-to-get-into-college-and-make-my-parents-happy&#8221; kid makes the PBL classroom very difficult when you are trying to get them to take risks and be creative. \u00a0Add that to the classroom culture that they have been used to for the first 9 years of their education in the U.S. and sadly, it makes for a tough place to foster the teaching of grit.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, on my most recent course evaluations I asked students what they found most challenging about the class and the two pieces that tied for first place were journal writing and<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8220;having to be vulnerable and make mistakes in front of my peers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I so want to change that and I always thought that I created a classroom atmosphere where students were comfortable. \u00a0I did all of these things that the professionals are suggesting on these websites:<\/p>\n<p>1. modeling risk-taking and making mistakes myself<br \/>\n2. talking about growth mindset regularly<br \/>\n3. ask them to write about positive experiences when they are proud of themselves<br \/>\n4. using class contribution feedback forms (<a href=\"Go to Settings, General, and click on Accessibility. Under Learning, turn Guided Access on. Then, Set Passcode. This is the passcode that will be used when Guided Access is enabled. Now, Now, open an App, like Desmos, and and triple-click the Home button. Press Start in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. A brief message Guided Access Enabled will show briefly, then the App is available and one cannot access any other App or quit the current App. To end Guided Access, triple click the Home button and enter the Passcode, then click on End in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.\">self-report<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Student-Analysis-of-Contribution.pdf\">analysis of class contribution <\/a>sheets)<br \/>\n5. using strategies where students think of a wrong way before we talk about the correct solution method together.<\/p>\n<p>But somehow, even at the end of the year, their fear of being wrong in front of each other (and me, some commented) is still predominantly what they say challenged them. \u00a0So I would say to Po Bronson, where is the teacher of Grit? \u00a0What is the secret? \u00a0How do I make it so? \u00a0Is there a time when it&#8217;s too late for some kids? \u00a0Most of what I&#8217;ve seen on the internet is teaching grit to elementary school children &#8211; does the fact that I am teaching high school kids make it any harder?<\/p>\n<p>I finally found this great Prezi created by a teacher named <a href=\"http:\/\/prezi.com\/x6coghe3zlit\/grit-pie\/?utm_campaign=share&amp;utm_medium=copy\">Kristen Goulet\u00a0<\/a>which, I know, is geared towards elementary school kids, but I think I could find a way to direct it towards older students. \u00a0The idea of having them ask themselves whether their self-talk is &#8220;because of me&#8221; or &#8220;because of other&#8221; and whether it is &#8220;permanent (i.e. fixed mindset)&#8221; or &#8220;temporary (i.e. growth mindset)&#8221; definitely would help them realize how much of the way the deal with adversity is flexible. \u00a0It also helps with seeing how to have a more realistic and optimistic view of a certain situation (and is kind of hard to argue with).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/prezi.com\/embed\/x6coghe3zlit\/?bgcolor=ffffff&amp;lock_to_path=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;autohide_ctrls=0&amp;features=undefined&amp;disabled_features=undefined\" height=\"400\" width=\"550\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m still in search for the best practices to teach grit (and apparently so is Angela Duckworth &#8211; she admits this in her TED talk), but now I know that it is way more complex than just following a certain number of steps &#8211; it has so much more to do with a student&#8217;s socio-emotional state of mind. <a href=\"http:\/\/greatergood.berkeley.edu\/article\/item\/whats_wrong_with_grit\">Vicki Zakrzewski&#8217;s article &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong with Grit?&#8221;<\/a> is probably the closest I got to agreeing with someone&#8217;s assessment of grit and how to teach it. \u00a0I know that I am really good at letting kids know what is important to me and doing that modeling that is important as well. \u00a0Undoing what has happened to them before they got to me is a tall order, but I&#8217;m not going to stop trying.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=SchettinoPBL\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-size=\"large\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in the middle of working on organizing my courses for the Exeter conference in about a week and something I&#8217;m really struggling with is trying to articulate to teachers how they can impart to their students this idea of grit in the PBL classroom. \u00a0So I started doing a little research online (besides looking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,71,11,17,6],"tags":[37,25,20,47,55,46],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-grit","category-in-the-classroom","category-other-resources","category-problem-based-learning","tag-creativity","tag-motivation","tag-pbl","tag-pedagogy","tag-resilience","tag-uncertainty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}