2 Steps for Teaching Grit and Resilience to Students

When we talk about resilience, it’s important to consider the concept of grit. Grit is perseverance; it is the decision (and ability) to keep moving forward rather than giving up. When we are teaching grit, students may experience some frustration. That is normal; in fact, if they aren’t experiencing frustration, then they do not have the opportunity to use grit. 

Students who demonstrate grit are more confident and, ultimately, learn at higher levels. Therefore, it is important for us to teach and reinforce this skill. How can we do that? There are two basic steps.

Create a Climate that Encourages Grit

Your first step is to make sure your overall classroom environment encourages grit. This starts with you! Share your own experiences of when you struggled and persevered. Model it for students. I remember one year when I was teaching graduate students. They were all teachers coming to school at night to work on a master’s degree. Research writing was a challenge for them. One night, I brought in an article I had written for a journal—one that had been rejected. 

I showed them the comments, and then explained what I was going to do to revise and resubmit the article. It was an eye-opener for them. As one student said, “I never realized you didn’t write perfectly all the time!” Our students don’t see us struggle. They think we just magically do what we do. It's important to show them otherwise.

We can also provide role models with stories of people who have persevered. This can be with posters of those people along with a quote exemplifying how they overcame challenges or by reading about them. One strategy I used was to have my students research someone who struggled and create the posters with accompanying narrative. Today, I would probably have them create a fake Facebook page on a poster for display.

Another alternative is to use literature to learn about perseverance. Of course, you can read nonfiction books and articles, but there are also examples in literature that teach this lesson.

Third, talk about grit. Be explicit when discussing the role of grit in learning. Regularly use words such as frustration, tenacity, perseverance, resilience and self-confidence. Also be sure to praise students specifically using this vocabulary when their efforts warrant it. 

Provide Opportunities for Students to Demonstrate Grit

The second step is to allow students to actually practice using grit. This one is a bit tricky. You must know your students well enough to know how much frustration they can handle, and then provide them a learning opportunity in which they will struggle. Quick success is not your goal in crafting the activity; providing them an opportunity to feel frustrated and respond is. 

Thomas Hoerr in Fostering Grit: How do I prepare my students for the real world? describes an effective process to use when presenting students a learning opportunity to develop grit.

1. Create frustration
   1. Before they start, ask students to anticipate how hard the assignment might be and to think about something else they have done at the same level.
   2. Next, ask them to think about a task when they were successful and how grit played a role.
   3. Then, have students work on the assignment with five minutes of full-force effort. When they struggle, they should stop and breathe, reflect and try something else.
   4. Remind students that a good failure is one where you learn. What are you learning?
2. Monitor the experience
   1. Gauge how frustrated they are using a simple scale (numbers or just up and down). 
   2. Ask how they respond to frustration. Place them in groups based on the strategies they used for a response. Ask the groups to discuss. 
   3. Create a checklist to monitor progress. You may want something like a two-column chart with headings of key points in the lesson on the left and a place for notes on the right. For younger students, you can keep this as the teacher (based on your observations); for older students, they can self-assess. 
3. Reflect and learn. Discuss the lessons learned. Then celebrate progress!

Take care with the amount of “grit opportunities” you provide. For many of your struggling learners, everything is a “grit opportunity.” These, however, will be structured experiences in which you coach them on how to respond appropriately. You’ll also want to make sure they understand what you are doing and why so they don’t give up. 

A Final Note

When we want to help students become resilient, grit is a key skill. Helping students understand grit, creating a climate that encourages grit, and providing opportunities for students to practice grit are essential strategies for teachers.