Science

A 2011 University of Pennsylvania study followed 300 students through a year of middle school, measuring their good and bad feelings (depression, positiveemotion, life satisfaction) and how teachers rated their classroom behavior.The study found negative emotions (depression and anxiety) did not predict academic achievement, but positive emotions actually did. Students in the positive group had higher grades thatkept increasing the next year.In particular, researchers concluded, character strengths are the “mostpromising lever for increasing academic achievement.”The most promising leverNot your GPA. Not whether you can ace standardized tests. Not your IQ.Not whether you come from a two-parent home, listened to Baby Mozartas an infant and spent your Saturdays at museums. Not how many homes youbuilt for Habitat for Humanity or hoursyou practiced basketball on an actualcourt instead of in front of an Xbox.Now, let’s not ignore those typicalmeasures, as some of them may beindicative of character strengths. If youare in the top 5 percent of your class,scored a 2100 on your SAT, or are thestar player on your basketball teambecause you get up at 6 a.m. every dayto practice, it’s likely you are resilient…or “gritty” as researchers say.Grit is just one of many characterstrengths positive psychologyresearchers are focused on these days,but it seems to be the one gaining themost headlines.It owes much of its newfound fame toAngela Duckworth, Ph.D., an associateprofessor of psychology at Penn Stateand a 2013 recipient of the MacArthurFoundation “genius” grant for herresearch on grit and self-control as traitsthat predict success.Angela is co-developer of the “GritSurvey,” a 22-statement evaluationthat is quite predictive of futuresuccess with questions like “I do notalways finish what I begin” and “I amdoggedly persistent.” The test measuresperseverance for long-term goals andcan predict grade success at selectiveuniversities, retention at elite military academies (better than the U.S. MilitaryAcademy at West Point’s own tests) andranking in a national spelling bee.Angela’s mentor is Martin E.P.Seligman, Ph.D., who took psychologyin a completely different directionas the founder of “positive psychology,”studying what makes people happyinstead of what makes them need Prozac.“[Angela’s] notion of grit seems toencompass—to varying degrees—thecharacter of perseverance, self-regulation,zest, curiosity and hope,” says MarkLinkins, consultant for educationalpractices at the Values in Action Instituteon Character in Cincinnati. “It seemsthat grit is the nearest thing we have to a‘secret sauce’ for success. When we lookat the list of those who have achieved great success… in their respective fields, it is evidence that talent alone doesn’texplain much.“Grit is what sustains dedication to atask across time. Without that sustaineddedication, we may have bursts ofinspiration and creativity, but such shortbursts only rarely create anything oflasting value.”Grit researchJane Gillham, Ph.D., co-director of thePenn Resiliency Project, contributeda chapter on resilience to the Oxford Handbook of Happinessreleased inJanuary2013. She reports thatAngela and Martin’s research in2005 found that self-discipline wasa stronger predictor of adolescents’grades than their IQ. She also notes that research from 2009 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health ServicesAdministration showed programs thatteach coping, problem-solving skillsand social competence also improvedspecific academic cognitive skills,grades, standardized testing scoresand graduation rates.In addition, she found that two-thirds of U.S. adults thinkschools should educate studentson their social, emotional andbehavioral needs.“When people think about resilience,”Jane writes, “major adversities typicallycome to mind. For example, the childwho performs well in school and whodevelops close connections to others, despite enduring years of abuse andneglect. The process of resilience isalso reflected in positive adaptation in response to everyday stresses (conflicts with peers, low marks in school) andcommon life transitions (the birth of asibling, the break-up of a relationshipduring adolescence).”Jane advocates integrating lessonson grit and resiliency in schools—notjust as a by-the-way mention by a well intentionedteacher, but explicitly as partof the curriculum.Gregory Park, a post-doctoral fellowstudying positive psychology at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, recentlypublished a white paper on wellbeingand achievement that draws heavily fromthe research by Martin and Angela.Gregory discusses the perseverancepiece of the predictive puzzle: “Inparticular, the strengths of self controland perseverance are powerfulpredictors of many of the desired outcomes from students, inside andoutside of the classroom. These nonintellectualstrengths are related tothe capacity to delay gratification andsustain effort through difficult tasks.”Martin and Angela’s researchshows self-control and perseverancepredict grades, absences, at-homestudy habits, classroom conduct andhomework completion.So why isn’t resiliency a class just likegeometry? Some schools are workingon that.Austin ISDLast Halloween, a huge section ofAustin, Texas, was flooded. Five peopledied; 8,500 homes lost power; morethan 500 homes were damaged; and Perez Elementary School closed fortwo days.When the school reopened Mondaymorning, counselors were on-siteto help the kids process what hadhappened. The district’s Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) coach wasthere, too.Sherrie Raven, director of thedistrict’s SEL department, remembersthe students telling stories about howthey waited on top of their houses forboats to rescue them.“The kids were able to say, ‘I was really scared but I used my deep breathsto calm down’ or ‘I used my self-talk to say I’m going to be OK, I can staycalm,’ ” Sherrie says. “It’s one of thebest examples I’ve seen of the resiliencethat we’ve helped build in these kids.They had the grit and self-awareness tosay, ‘I’m going to be OK. I’m not goingto panic.’ These are little guys, and theyhave that language.”Now, language isn’t better grades.But this is evidence to Sherrie thather program is on the right track.And research looking at 213 SEL programs (250,000 students) agrees.Gregory writes that when resilience is taught in the classroom, grades and standardized testscores increased by 11 percent.Positive social behaviors and attitudesabout school, self and others increased9 percent. Andadolescent depression, anxiety andconduct problems decreased by 9 percent.Research from SEL and the PennResiliency Program (a school-basedintervention that is an offshoot of theuniversity’s resiliency research) has shown that“school-based interventions can havereal, lasting effects on student wellbeing,”Gregory writes.SEL centers on five guiding principles:self-awareness, self-management,social awareness, relationship skills andresponsible decision-making.From elementary through high schoolAustin ISD, the academic home to87,000 students, is among the first publicschool districts in the nation to bringSEL into the school day. The departmentopened in July 2011 and beganintroducing SEL into its vertical teamstructures (elementary schools that feedinto middle schools, which feed intohigh schools). The five vertical teamsleft will be included within the next twoschool years.The first two high schools tointegrate the SEL curriculum in Austinhad a very clear reason why: One had11 deaths on its campus within a year—some natural, some accidental, somesuicides. The other had seen promisingstudents drop out of college aftergraduation because they didn’t havethe grit to continue, “the ability to say,‘That really sucked but I can move on,’ ” as Sherrie describes it.Rudolph “Keeth” Matheny is anSEL instructional coach at one of thoseschools, Austin High School. Here’s one of his grit lessons: Take a piece of paperand draw a big square. Divide that intoquarters. Divide those into quarters.How many squares to you have?“The non-gritty say 16 and put theirheads down,” Keeth says. “Kids who aregritty see the whole thing is a square,so 17. And I guess each of the boxes is asquare, so 21. Then there’s a square inthe middle, so 22. Then each side hasfour more, so 26. There are three-by-three squares, four of those, so thereare 30.“I give a prize to the kid who findsthe 30 squares.Was it intelligence that enabled this student to see how many squares there were? Was it that he knew the answer? No. What caused him to accomplish this task differently than everybody else in the room? The answer is he persevered. He was willing to challenge himself to push through to­ find more squares. That’s what grit is.” More than 200 teachers have visited Austin ISD’s SEL program in the past year, observing what teachers like Keeth are doing. SELs don’t call such lessons “character,” as Martin, Angela and other researchers do. But the life lessons are quite similar.​“We have a lesson in kindergartenon how we feel feelings in our bodies.Anger feels different than embarrassed,”Sherrie says. “In middle school, we havelessons about whether bullying can everbe an accident. In high school, we talkabout setting goals and making plans.All along the way, you have lessons inmanaging your own emotions. How do you handle anger, disappointment?How do you keep going? How do you joina group on the playground? How do youuse self-talk to keep going on somethingthat’s hard?”That’s where the grit comes in.“Your classroom teacher can say inmath class, ‘When I get to a problemthat makes me really want to give up, I really have to use some self-talk to say:‘I know how to do this. I can do this,’ ”Sherrie says. “Having the classroomteachers introduce the curriculumreally lets us work on that integration of learning throughout the school.”Austin’s goal is to eventually have“self-talk” on the day’s agenda, just likefractions. For now, though, the skills are woven into traditional academic lessonsas they are written by theSELteam.For example, while working on a scienceexperiment, students are instructed towork on making sure everybody gets aturn to talk. At the end of the lesson,students are asked to rate themselves ona scale of 1 to 5 on how they did withletting everyone talk and are asked torate their groups.“We make it visible,” Sherrie says.Resilience at KIPPTrinity Mann is in her second year at theKIPPIn­finityMiddle School in New York City. The sixth-grade student struggledat her previous magnet school, so much sothat her confidencewas shaken, says hermom, Nicole.“If she would take a test and felt she gotone wrong, she was defeated,” Nicole says.“And for the rest of the test, even if sheknew the material, she’d already given up.”Nicole called it Trinity’s need to “snapback.” The Knowledge Is Power Program(KIPP) calls it her grit.Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg foundedKIPPin a Houston public school classroomof 47 kids in 1994. Today,KIPPis a publiccharter school with 141 campuses nationwide,serving 50,000 students in 20 states andWashington, D.C.KIPProlled out a morestructured character strength program inNew York City in 2009.KIPPfocuses on the seven characterstrengths Dave developed with Angelaand Chris Peterson, Ph.D.: grit,zest, self-control, social intelligence,gratitude, optimism and curiosity.Trinity has lessons in grit onTuesdays and Thursdays. But she usesthose lessons every day, according toher mother, who says she’s seen an 80to 90 percent improvement in Trinity’sability to snap back since she startedattendingKIPPIn­finity. She shows gritin everything from math to dance.When Trinity was in the ­fifthgrade,she told her non­fictionteacher atKIPP she didn’t feel con­fident about her classwork. “He pushed me to dobetter, and I actually made a goodgrade,” she says. “And that wasmy goal.”Why is grit important to her?Because she wants to get into a topcollege, not just a college. That’s just what Dave had in mind back when hecreated the character program.“We always said our mission wascharacter and academic skills for collegeand life,” Dave says. “Anyone who spendsany time teaching or with kids knowsthat issues like self-control and grit andgratitude are important things to talk tokids about. Yet, we really didn’t know thescience behind it.”That was until Dave met Martinand Angela. “We’re working on goingbeyond the language of grit and lookingat the actual behaviors associated with it….I think that reallyclari­fiesfor people what grit really means,” Dave says.KIPP focuses on ­fivegrit-speci­fic behaviors: finishwhat you begin,stick with an activity for more than afew weeks, try hard after failure, staycommitted to goals and keep workinghard, even when you feel like quitting.“What you’re really trying to get kids to do is understand that there are repeatable behaviors that they can do to be gritty,” he says. “You’re alsotrying to work with teachers on how to structure your classroom and yourschools to create situations where kidsget to do these repeatable behaviors.For example, do students haveenough structure to sustain rigorous,independent practice in class—timeby themselves or with another student,working independent of a teacher—tokeep going?”Speci­fic to Angela’s research,KIPPschools are asking teachers to increasethe amount of independent practicewithin their lessons and to work onbuilding stamina for reading.“That requires workingindependently with focus, not givingup when you get frustrated,” Daveexplains. “We’re intentionally teachingkids strategies to build their stamina,while, as the kids get older, we’reteaching them short- and long-termgoal-setting. When kids receive theirtests back in, say, math class, some ofour teachers are having kids creategoals for the next week: ‘How am Igoing to study for next week’s test?What am I going to do differently?’"VIA Institute onCharacterMartin’s work with VIA resultedin the classi­fication of 24 characterstrengths.KIPP narrowed the 24 down to the ones with the strongest correlation toacademic achievement. VIA’s approach is similar, but focuses on the concept of “signature strengths.” “Each of us has a unique constellation of strengths,” VIA consultant Mark explains. “How can we help each student and teacher understand their own strengths pro­file? How do they use that pro­file to learn, achieve, connect with others? Ourapproach is respecting the individualcontent of each person’s character andshining a light on that.”The Newark Boys Chorus School,Shanghai American School and BellaVista Elementary School have usedVIA’s character strength approach.Jennifer Fisher, who taught ­first grade at Shanghai’s American Schoolwhen the school introduced VIAcharacter strengths into the curriculum,started the conversation during readingtime, highlighting strengths in thepicture book’s characters: “A word like‘perseverance,’ it’s a very big word. Butif you explain it to them and that itmeans you keep trying and you don’t give up, they’ll remember theword—‘perseverance.’ ”Mark doesn’t necessarily thinkgrit is more important for academicachievement today than it was 50 years ago. Students today facedifferent challenges. “While I think the ‘grit formula’ hasalways been in play, it may have greaterrelevance for students today simplybecause the opportunities to make one’smark seem to be somewhat more limitedthan they were at one time, due totechnology, a shrinking workforce, etc.,”he says. “When competition increases,perhaps grit becomes a more valuablecommodity. From an evolutionarystandpoint, this certainly makes sense.”Can You Make KidsMore—or Less—Gritty?Resilience education, as taught throughthe Penn Resiliency Program, focuseson six strengths: emotional competence,self-control, problem-solving anddecision-making, social awareness,social competence, self-ef­ficacy andrealistic optimism.Gregory’s research indicates resiliencyis at least malleable, “making it a primetarget for interventions.”“The breadth of places where grit hasproved impactful is really incredible,”Dave says. “There are differentchallenges faced at different ages inpeople of different backgrounds, butsome of these character skills remain thesame. The frustrations and challengesaffluent kids or low-income kids facemay look different from time to time,yet both sets of kids need to be ableto get over their frustrations, to workindependently and focus. I think that’swhy Angela’s research is so powerfuland why so many people are so into itright now.”Are overly involved “helicopterparents” parenting in a way that’s counterproductive to the importance of developing grit in their kids? Maybe.“One way to think about it thatI share with parents and teachers isthat it is always safe to fail around thework kids are doing,” Dave says. “It isalways safe for kids to make mistakesin the essay they’re writing or the mathproject they’re doing or when learning to play the piano or violin. Mistakes areactually there for learning.”Sherrie agrees: “It is critical we teachthe kids, ‘You can do this yourself.’ ”In April, Austin ISD’s Keethspoke at a congressional hearing inWashington, D.C., hosted by theCommittee for Children on the topic ofteaching character strengths like grit inschool. His goal was not for parents towish their kids were in his classroom,but that his lessons were in everystudent’s classroom.“Everybody is all about the commoncore, math scores, biology scores,” hesays. “They don’t realize that it’s lessonslike this—like grit and mindset—thatmake all of those things better. Whenyou teach a kid to persevere, that you’renot born with math skills, that kidachieves way more. And that’s whenscores go up.”