It's not about grit

For years we have been inundated by the idea of grit. Angela Duckworth's idea of grit has been percolating trough schools and businesses. Her 2013 TED talk has over 22 million views. There is an online grit test. Grit is the skill of perseverance in the face of challenge. Gritty people are more successful.

In this era of social unrest over social injustice, many books have been published about what makes people of color more "disadvantaged" than others. What is at the root of the generational lower performance in school? Some have suggested that these children, do not have grit; that their dropout rate proves it. Well, I believe that the drop out rate proves little. Some studies have suggested that up to 30% of drop outs are gifted- they do not lack the ability to persevere in the face of academic challenge.

Steven Goodman's book, It's Not About Grit: Trauma, Inequity, and the Power of Transformative Teaching, highlights the challenges that many poor students of color have that interfere with their ability to be successful in school. Goodman is the executive director of New York's Educational Video Center. For decades he has taught courses in documentary film making to students in New York City who are old for their grade and statistically unlikely to graduate. Every semester they produce a documentary about a social issue the students are interested in. Themes have emerged over the years- health and housing, police and justice, immigration, gender and identity, and foster care are the ones that are featured in this book. His intermingling of students' quotes with facts about what his students experience presents often disturbing insights. He strongly challenges the notion that his students are unsuccessful in school because they lack grit. He proposes that they are gritty about survival and school does not play a role in their day to day getting through.

The book is accompanied by video clips that showcase students sharing their lives. Public housing that contributes to severe health concerns, poverty that leads to parents working long hours often at odds with school schedules, fear of ICE taking them or their families, police brutality that saps their sense of safety, harassment due to gender identity issues or sexism, and a broken foster care system all play a role in undermine the ability of these students to be successful because they are overwhelmed with a lack of safety and security. These children endure countless challenges that we struggle to grasp. It causes chronically elevated cortisol levels which interfere with cognitive development and thinking. They do, however, persevere in often unimaginable circumstances. They do poorly in school or drop out, not because they cannot engage in perseverance in the face of challenge, but because they choose different challenges to fight through- often those related to survival.

The bleak picture is flanked by a message of hope. Students who endure multiple traumas become more likely to succeed when they encounter two things: an adult touchstone who believes in them, encourages them and helps them find solutions to the multitude of challenges they face, and a sense of agency. Goodman hopes that his course teaches students to examine issues and learn about ways to seek solutions. This agency, the idea that something can be done about their situation, can lead them to escape a cycle of poverty that engulfs so many.

Goodman believes that if we understand the traumas that our students experience, we can better engage them. Not with more of what we traditionally do, but with something different. Education focused on transforming lives through improving our circumstances. Taking stances, fighting for justice, working to reduce inequity. The Civil Rights movement had a huge cadre of kids; college students engaged in civil disobedience and acts of assembly as a way to work toward change. We can encourage students to tackle the injustices of their lives and work to improve society. When our schools empower them to engage in social justice, we also empower them to learn more about everything.

A book that shows a window into the lives of children who experience repeated trauma and yet have the resilience to go on. They work tirelessly at the things they perceive necessary to survival. Understanding from teachers is essential if we are to connect and build with these students. 

Blended Learning in Action

 I joined a book study group at school about Caitlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff and Jason T. Green's book, Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide toward Sustainable Change. In me form, I read the book in its entity over break. The book was published in 2017 and it seems somewhat prescient when it says, "In just a few years, all the buzz about 'blended' learning will fade, and it will simply be learning" (p 192). With the pandemic we have been thrust into blended learning without the careful planning and ramp up that the book recommends. It has been a year of being thrown into the deep end to see if we can swim. Some are doing well and some are barely keeping their heads above water and some are drowning. Trying to implement some of the ideas from the book in this situation is far from ideal.

First the book has no target audience. This is a serious fault. Sometimes it is talking to administrators, others to teacher. While the advice to pick and choose which chapters to dive in to is given, rarely have I found it so glaringly how the book was written. Some sections are for one group over another, but they are not well delineated, so picking the most appropriate ones would be a challenge.

Second, the book refers to models that it does not include. If you are going to reference them and in your book study questions ask how you would implement their advice you have to include the models and their descriptions. Beg, borrow or rewrite the models so that you can explain what you mean to your readers.

The third major weakness of the book is the figures. Some are in font sizes far too small to read. I know I am old, but so is a large percentage of the teaching population. If it needs to go to two pages so that it is accessible, make it so. Other figures are not juxtapositioned appropriately. Too much space between the reference and the figure. We should not have to look far for a figure. 

The book does have some great nuggets. One of my favorites is, "Though information is more readily available to students today through technology, access to information is fundamentally different than learning" (p. 191). We sometimes get caught in the wheel of we presented it therefore it is their fault if they don't get it cycle. This is more of a concern today with the access to information students have. We need to be really make sure we are checking for understanding.

The authors suggest that several aspects of blended learning are important considerations: offers opportunities for personalization (time, place, pace, and path) and agency, authentic audiences, connectivity with people around the world, and creativity. While they do not say blended learning is a personalized instruction method, they imply it throughout the book, but then they comment on the essential provision of keeping students roughly together. 

For administration they offer suggestions for slowly adopting, testing and onboarding teachers to a blended learning path. This foundation building was thrown out the window in the face of the pandemic. We are moving forward in a crazy drunken stumble trying to make blended instruction work for our kids. Some schools are offering lots of support to teachers to help them adapt, others are not so much. 

For teachers there are some descriptions of different models of blended instruction. Unfortunately most is offered at a high level rather than including sample lesson plans, ideal platforms and apps. I know that technology is changing at a rate that we cannot hope to keep up with, but the lack of specifics will hamper some people's adoption of the ideas. Caitlin's chapter on the whole group rotation is the best in the book for practical, use-now ideas. 

Each chapter ends with book study questions that include examine the benefits and challenges of the topic and how do you address the potential challenges. They ask the reader to think about what they need to do to address the topic in the chapter, what support they might need and how they can get it. In this way they are really asking the reader to examine their personal situation and think about how to include blended learning in their space. 

It will be interesting to see how other book study members view this book and where we jump from here.