I wanted to spend today thinking about the obstacles that prevent students from connecting their projects to the outside world. But I have spent too much time around Simon Hauger so I had to try and phrase the prompt in a positive way first: how do you, your school, and your life help you connect projects? And what in those areas slows you down or gets in the way?

My favorite moment and a great conversation point was from the first document: “You have to be careful about yourself and how you get out there?” Combine this with a great point raised by another student — “I’d be afraid to take on an outside project because of what could happen if something went wrong.”

One of the best parts of our program has to be the ways in which we try and connect students and their work with the outside world. We do our best to break down the barriers between school and the outside world — no easy task — and hope that the work can be measured against real world standards and that the successes and failures of trying to do something authentic can provide important experiences.

Today we’ll begin by asking the why connecting to the outside world matters. I know I’ve asked this a thousand or more times before but I want to make sure that we discuss why this matters. Tomorrow, I think I’ll look at what’s get in the way, mostly because I want the eleventh graders to consider their role in these partnerships, i.e., how can I stop being the gatekeeper or the conduit to the outside world and become a coach instead?

Later in the day:
We had a good conversation. What’s striking to me is how closely they’ve internalized this notion of an outward facing education. While we do not explicitly criticize how other schools operate, the students definitely have an understanding of what this means, to focus on outside connections.

Here are some of their thoughts, which I’m going to build around tomorrow as a way of seeing whether it’s happening or not:

Our projects should connect because our projects solve real world problems. TJC
So that we understand the work we do and how we learn from them. TJC
To inspire others. ES
…our projects need to connect to the outside world because we need to be able to understand …how it will be once we actually are on our own. JF
To see who likes our stuff. AB
Projects are more important than a grade. AB
The only reason I can think of is because we have real standards for our work. QG
We learn about what’s out there in the world but also how to change it. TC
Maybe our projects can touch people in a way that they can help themselves. DL
It is important for projects to connect to the real world because you can make a change somewhere, you can better a community. JH
Sometimes when you do projects, you break barriers, you do things people don’t believe you can do, and you can prove people wrong. JH
Projects connected to the outside world have more meaning. KB

After reading and discussing various things this week, we wrote our own grit scale. These are the questions we can ask ourselves to see if we’re being resilient, resourceful, or gritty. A great exercise and terrific conversation.

Two questions I’m thinking about before school:

In conversations over the past two days, each group has talked about grit being something that you either have or don’t, or that you have in certain situations and not others. How do we help kids see their resilience in one area and then bring it to another?

Two, how do we help students/humans think about creating resilient communities? In other words, what can we do together to make a “gritty” or “resilient” group that supports each other and that moves everyone’s work along? Is this possible? What research has been done on this idea? What still needs to be done?

We started today by writing on the back of yesterday’s article:

can grit be taught?

No one was allowed to answer maybe or both; you had to pick one or the other. I was thrilled with the conversation that followed (hope my undergrads live up this afternoon…know they will).

“Grit can be taught given the right use of strategies and acknowledgement of how to use them.” –JF

“I think we have to teach grit to ourselves.”

“You can explain what it is and how people use it but you can’t teach how to BE it.” ES

“Some people are just born with grit and resilience. Others must be taught by doing projects they love or have a connection with.” HG

“Grit can’t be taught because it is part of someone’s personality.”

“People can tell you to have self-control or give you feedback but it’s always up to you to make it happen.”

My favorite: Grit can be taught through exposure or experience. JW

—we also had an interesting side conversation about whether you can teach someone to be happy or sad, whether emotions can be “learned”.

Like most schools, we spend time thinking about grit. Resilience. Empowering students. Overcoming obstacles. Rising up.

We read Professor Duckworth’s piece from Sunday’s paper today. It’s cool — I’m reading Paul Tough’s book with my Penn class tomorrow — so I’ve been churning again on this topic.

As we read and tried to translate for each other, we got stuck on one line:

“Getting feedback is one thing, and listening to it is another.”

AB noted that that’s when they see a comment and hit resolve without thinking. But we all talked about the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

We ended by composing tweets, one about oneself and one about the school:

“AD wants to teach students self-reflection (how to reflect on your work.)” MH
“We can know how character makes us a person that makes the school how good it is.” AB
“When I think about our school I see grit because we do learn about taking the steps to push yourself even when you don’t want to.” JH
“I think this article says that I should start thinking about the ways I use feedback.” KB

I wrote the following
Grit can’t be taught. School should create situations where it’s needed.

Opened today by looking at a project as a ship and the likely obstacles that might present as icebergs. Once they did the drawing — and man do people love drawing — we passed the paper and their peers drew rescue planes. Or rescue fish. Or rescue whales.

Our students have gotten good at identifying strategies. What we need to work on is tracking how we implement those strategies and measure their success.

Example one:

Example two:

In our week thinking about how projects develop, how we keep them moving, and what we do to solve problems, I asked everyone to do a drawing of how their project might resemble the layers of an onion. I’m trying to help everyone see the connections between all the work they’re doing.