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.