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.

I had a pang of guilt regarding a letter I need to write soon and thought I’d begin class this way: think about a project that evolved over time and explain how someone might recommend you based on this project. There were a number of telling letters — for the conversation I had them discuss other individuals at the table and projects they completed — but the negative one below shows a level of self-awareness that is truly compelling. And sad. When s/he’s rich and famous, I’m going to send this their way.

Rainy Monday morning. Taking up another ideal of ours — problem solving — somewhat obliquely with this journal question:

How do projects evolve or change or develop? What factors affect the process? Why do projects change?

Some of the responses we talked over:
* people find a better way
* people’s minds change
* people want to challenge themselves; think beyond where they are.
* when things aren’t going well, finding a way to change it.
* people are dissatisfied

JW: Projects are like building a model. First it’s on a piece of paper, then a replica (a small view of what everything is supposed to look like), then it’s the real live model. The way you start to build will affect the outcome. So the process is everything: if it is created strongly than most likely what you will build will be.