Partnership Educators,
Self-confidence is often the starting place for continued perseverance. We give a lot of effort to motivating students within our system but motivation comes from the self-confidence to try. Grit has been a very popular word that has been used in a wide variety of ways to restate "perseverance" and I think many people think this is also motivation. I have been talking about these topics for some time as traits that are as important to develop within our students as any content that we teach.
Research gives us many insights into grit and it tells us that people have it when they have three things present. The first part of Grit is about interest. The passion to try anything new or to continue to try once you fail is because of this intrinsic joy of what you are doing. We try to build this through helpful criticism, corrective feedback, applause, and helping students learn the small nuances of whatever content we are having them explore. Students need to be encouraged to and have the freedom to explore the subject with coaching. That builds interest because we have a skilled coach alongside helping us explore these new ideas. Every sport I have excelled at or any skill that I have excelled at in life has been because of my interest in it.
The second component of Grit is the capacity to practice deliberately. This isn't to say that they have the opportunity to practice. No, it means they have the opportunity to have deliberate practice. This is practice that is done with the watchful eye of the expert who is coaching in order to help correct errors. Gladwell's 10,000 hours doesn't come from just doing something for that long, it comes from deliberate coached practice. We help develop this when we help kids form stretch goals connected to longer term goals, we freely model mistakes and corrections of our mistakes and connect success to effort and not talent or genious.
The third and last component of Grit is purpose. Purpose gets at the "why" we are doing anything. Students, like adults, desire to know why something matters. Connecting content to future goals or real life helps us all to know that it is a worthwhile effort to continue.
Normally when you start a paragraph with "The third and last component" you are done with what you are trying to say, but those three components of Grit don't explain it all.
I started this article with the idea that self-confidence is the starting place of perseverance. What researchers call, Hope. It isn't enough for us to build the environment of interest, practice, and purpose because humans also need the hope that it is possible or the self-confidence that they can do it if they try. We all go through times where we have great amounts of confidence and then alter suffer from a lack of any confidence. Even some of the most successful individuals in the world suffer from a lack of self-confidence. I certainly have had many moments in my life where I doubted myself. What does research tell us about helping people with their self-confidence (hope)? I can say that in one word, encouragement.
I leave you today with the story of a remarkable young man with enough self-confidence for all of us.
Have a very hopeful weekend. I am certainly hopeful for the future of our nation with individuals like Josiah headed to adulthood.
Rob