The Importance of Grit in Lower School and Middle School
What is grit? Grit is having courage and resolve, strength of character, and creating perseverance and passion for long term goals. Grit is essential for school-aged children as it fosters resilience, academic success, and long-term personal growth.
Students with grit develop a positive growth mindset and are challenged to achieve academic self-efficacy. The road to achieving success is identifying opportunities or passion and setting goals.
Talent Versus Grit
One may ask if grit is necessary if innate talent exists. The answer is yes. Grit will enhance anyone’s success. Talent is defined as a natural aptitude or skill. Every student has natural talents; whether in academics, athletics, or the arts. Some students rely solely on their talents to be successful and when challenged with a new skill that does not come naturally, they dismiss the opportunity and fall back into their familiar comfort zone. Grit is a balance of passion and perseverance. Passion is a strong feeling, excitement, or enthusiasm for a personal interest. Perseverance is maintaining a strong focus on goals and continuing to strive to achieve them despite obstacles or challenges. The key components to developing grit are growth, resilience, integrity, and tenacity. Grit challenges and develops a student’s ability to react with a positive growth mindset, face obstacles and challenges, understand integrity is making mistakes and moving forward, and ultimately tapping into their tenacity to stay focused and reach any goal they set. Grit allows a student to complete the marathon; it is not a sprint to a goal!
Grit and the Effect on Academic Success
If a student has grit, academic success typically follows. Grit gives a student courage and the ability to identify long term goals. Grit allows a student to face challenges and obstacles.. Grit drives a person to set goals.. Research shows that when a student grasps grit they are driven more to practice on any task.An increase in school attendance and school retention then follows. The effects on a student’s overall well being also increase. Being driven by a grit mentality naturally leads to a positive growth mindset. Positive growth mindset is the belief that you can learn and do anything if you work long and hard enough for it. Research shows that psychologically changes occur like the ability to reduce or cope with stressors, increase optimism, increase self-efficacy, and strengthen the capacity to self-regulate emotions; which leads to overall better academic results.
Grit and Personal Development
Positive growth mindset leads to the development of personal growth and resilience. Positive growth mindset is believing a person’s abilities are not innate but can be improved through effort and persistence. Research shows with this mindset students develop into a continual learner, are able to push themselves out of their comfort zone, and not accept but decide to take on challenges. This mindset assists students with changing the narrative to “I can do it”, face fears, allows self-compassion, and cultivates empathy and forgiveness. Resilience is that ability to withstand or quickly recover from difficulties. When a student is resilient their motivation improves, increases the capability to handle changes, experience less anxiety, have low behavioral issues, and improve on a variety of learning skills.
Grit builds Life Skills
The idea that with grit you understand gratification is not achieved as a sprint but a marathon, can initially be hard for students to grasp. However, if you adapt to this mindset, social and emotional benefits learned from having grit are used throughout one’s life. With the ability to plan, to understand delayed achievement or gratification, to strategize ways to overcome challenges and the ability to detour or pivot, and achieve a goal with consistent effort only enhances social and emotional skills. Students’ growth in coping skills, empathy, and self-regulation is more evident in students with grit. Coping skills learned are facing downfalls and negative results without a defeated mindset and focusing on the problem and dismissing the option to avoid and a need to think of different solutions are all skills gained from having grit. Empathy is increased as one can draw on challenges, defeats, and times of uncertainty from their own experiences to understand others feelings and emotions. Finally, self-regulation skills in areas of time management, responsibility, emotions, and ownership of positive and negative results are developed.
Roles of Parents and Educators when teaching Grit
How can parents and educators cultivate grit in their students? Parents can teach simple life skills that take time to achieve a goal. Developing grit in a child is knowing their passion and trying to assist with setting a long-term goal. Maybe it is money management and budgeting skills, healthy lifestyle goals, forming and maintaining relationships, or ownership of one’s personal belongings and property. Parents guide their children in the right directions throughout conversations. Take the next step and help a child set long-term goals and check in on their progress, help them see different approaches to obstacles that develop, and celebrate the successes of achieving the goal. Educators should embrace a Social and Emotional curriculum that teaches from a positive growth mindset. Within your classroom set academic goals and follow through with check-ins and guidance. Lower school students can learn about grit through project-based learning. While middle school students can widen their awareness of grit within STEM and STEAM learning environments. Educators should celebrate the successes and support the “failures” as a detour onto another track to success but embracing not giving up. Simply stated, both parents and educators need to model the expectations and take every teaching moment to redirect the child in figuring out what the next step to attaining the goal could be.
In conclusion, school age children are set up for success when they have role models working to instill grit into their lives. Grit builds character, emotional intelligence, improves social and emotional skills, and builds up an academic and positive growth mindset. Utilizing the four key components of grit: growth, resilience, integrity, and tenacity students can enhance their academic and personal goals and learn how to achieve goals. The end point may not be a sprint but they are armed with everything they need for this marathon.
