Overcoming Math Anxiety

This week's article summary is When Teachers Overcome Math Anxiety, Students Benefit, and it's dedicated to Jill, Becky, and Kerry.

As you’ll see from the article, everything we have focused on over the past 6-7 years with respect to math is supported by research: deeper conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, problem solving, flexible thinking.

Like the slow food movement, Trinity embraces slow math: we take the time to have students truly understand math concepts and the reasons and ways they work. 

Even with disruption due to the pandemic, I have been so pleased with our professional development opportunities like the Embolden Your Inner offerings for parents and employees. The three top anxieties adults have are fear of math, writing, and public speaking.

And our students thrive in these areas when our faculty feel more confident and competent in all those areas. Anyone who has taken Jill’s Embolden Your Inner Math classes gains much more confidence in math and hence much more confidently teaches it to their students.

While we’re not a test-driven school, our commitment to and emphasis on deeper mathematical understanding and confidence has led to significant increases in our math standardized-test scores which are now far above the independent-school average. As an example, this year’s fifth grade scores on the two ERB math subtests were 11% and 12% above independent school averages!

Let’s keep up the great work!

Joe 

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For many students (and many adults), just hearing the word math can send a chill down their spine.

My first brush with math anxiety came in college. I had breezed through math from elementary through high school. Then I enrolled in calculus and hit a wall. I got my first F ever on a test. Nothing helped me understand. My very identity as a math person was rattled. I even considered changing my major so that I wouldn’t ever have to feel that way again.

Many adults I have spoken with said their math anxiety began with required timed tests in elementary school. They knew the answers, but their brains froze when up against the clock. Others remembered wanting to understand the why and not just the how, and receiving lackluster or even hostile responses. In particular, women and people of color I have spoken with expressed their frustration at being labeled bad at math because their ideas didn’t mirror what their teachers expected.

Without intervention, children who experience math trauma and math anxiety often grow up to become adults with these unresolved issues. Some may become parents who feel helpless when their child brings home math homework. Some may become teachers who feel powerless when their students don’t understand the content or make self-deprecating comments about not being a math person. Their pain gets passed to the children, and the cycle continues.

Math anxiety and math trauma are very real, are extremely debilitating, and have been studied for decades. Yet they persist. Why, and what can we do about it?

The math classroom that prioritizes rote memorization, meaningless algorithms, and speed must become a relic of the past, and those of us who learned in those classrooms must take a deep dive and hone our own conceptual knowledge. Students need procedural fluency and efficient problem-solving strategies, for sure, but these must be rooted in understanding why the math works, which means the adults need to know why the math works.

Methods of math instruction that focus on conceptual understanding may take longer than what we’re used to, but the positive results are well worth the time. The mysteries of fractions, integers, and variables, topics that often cause the greatest amount of distress, can all be unlocked by a solid understanding of arithmetic crafted in the early grades. This means allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and letting our guard down in front of students by encouraging their questions and being willing to admit that we may not have all the answers.

Several educators are on a mission to assist their colleagues in the math community. Graham Fletcher hosts a series of videos on his website breaking down the progression of math topics, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Math educator and author Pam Harris regularly posts problems on Twitter and welcomes others to find clever solutions to arithmetic problems. Everyone is invited to participate at their comfort level and share their reasoning. Howie Hua, a math instructor at Fresno State, regularly shares his experience teaching math to future elementary school teachers on Twitter.

We have the power to break the cycle of math trauma and anxiety. No one should ever feel terrified of math. Math should be a subject where the rules of logic are tested, and then tested again. When teachers have both a strong conceptual understanding of math and a strong confidence in their ability to do math, they will be able to pass those on to students.

Motivating Teens to Work Harder in School

This week's article summary is What Would Motivate Teens to Work Harder in School.

Although Trinity is an elementary school, I like to read articles about teenagers, as obviously our young students will eventually be high schoolers and, as such,  we have an opportunity to shape needed habits and attitudes while they’re young and impressionable.

What would help teens by motivated to work harder in school?

Topping the list for teens is the opportunity to re-do assignments, which I’m guessing includes re-taking tests or other assessments.

Rounding out the top five is helping teens see the relevance of what they’re studying, injecting more humor and fun in the classroom, offering more hands-on opportunities, and providing more detailed formative feedback prior to any summative assessment.

Equally interesting to me were the lower selections by teens: they’re okay with stricter classroom rules and they don’t want teachers to grade more leniently. 

The list is interesting to me because I see in teens the same things we adults want in the workplace. We don’t want zero-sum evaluations; if we make a mistake, we want a re-do and a chance to fix it. We don’t want an overly stuffy, formal office; we want to be able to have a good time, including humor and levity. We want to see the meaning and purpose of our jobs and its responsibilities.

Teens often get a bad rap in the media: is there ever a movie or tv series about teens that doesn’t use the ‘Lord of the Flies’ theme?

This survey shows how mature, honest, and attuned to their needs teens are. I know re-doing assignments makes life much harder for teachers, but it would actually be closer to how teens will be treated years later as adults.

Joe

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If you thought being enthusiastic and personable were the best ways to motivate teenagers to work hard in school, then think again. It turns out what many teens say will motivate them the most is the opportunity to redo assignments if they get a low grade.

It’s not the most exciting solution, but there you have it.

Out of more than 20 options given to a nationally representative sample of 1,011 students, ages 13-19, the chance to redo assignments was the most selected, with 35 percent saying that is what would motivate them the most to do well in school. These are among the findings of surveys of teenagers and educators conducted by the EdWeek Research Center on student motivation and engagement.

Incorporating more humor and fun into class, providing more feedback, offering more hands-on experiences, and assigning more schoolwork on topics that are relevant and interesting to students rounded out the top five answers:

• Give Me a Chance to Redo Assignments if I get a Low Grade: 35%
• Let me do assignments on topics that interest me if they are relevant to what we are learning: 30%
• Incorporate more humor, fun, and games into class: 30%
• Offer more hand-on experiences including field trips, lab experiments, and internships: 30%
• Provide more feedback so I know what to improve before we get our grades: 30%
• Show me how I can use what I can use in my future career: 28%
• Use teaching methods others than lecturing to the class: 25%
• Offer choices of different ways I can demonstrate I have learned something: 25%
• Take more time to get to know me as a person: 25%
• Stop requiring assignments that feel like busywork: 25%
• Be more available for extra help outside of class: 22%
• Be more enthusiastic about the subject matter: 22%
• Give me the benefit of the doubt if I miss class/deadlines/get a low grade: 21%
• Stop playing favorites: 18%
• Do a better job of controlling the class: 16%
• Let us get to know your as a real person: 14%
• Make the class a little easier: 11%
• Let students help decide classroom rules: 11%
• Make class more challenging: 9%
• Be less strict with discipline: 6%

But ask educators what they think they could do to better motivate students, and you’ll get very different answers than what you hear from students.

The most-cited solution among educators surveyed separately by the EdWeek Research Center to motivate students was offering more hands-on learning experiences. Fifty-four percent of educators said providing more field trips, lab experiments, and internships was what they or teachers in their district or school could do to help students feel more motivated to do their best.

The second-most selected response, from 45 percent of educators, was showing students how they can use what they learn in future careers. Rounding out the top three was “offer a choice of different ways students can demonstrate they have learned something,” which was selected by 44 percent of educators.

The EdWeek Research Center survey identified other discrepancies between educators and students. For instance, both groups rated students’ motivation in school very differently.

Eighty-six percent of students said they feel motivated to do their best in school right now, but only 67 percent of educators said their students were motivated.

While only 38 percent of students said that as of 2023, the pandemic has made them less motivated to do their best in school, 80 percent of teachers said that the pandemic has made students less motivate.

However, there was one area of agreement: when asked to rate educators’ level of motivation, around 80 percent of both students and educators said that teachers in their school or district were motivated to do their best to teach students.

It's Better to Under-React Than Over-React

This week's article summary is Under-reaction is Your Best Parenting Tool.

In my previous headship, I had to deal with a contiguous neighborhood association. As my former school had three entrance gates, the neighborhood association wanted us to close one gate in order to alleviate thru-traffic through the main road of the neighborhood. Whenever the neighborhood association president would meet with me, he always brought up his desire to close this entrance. I had no reason to shut the gate. First, it would create more traffic in the two remaining entrances. Second, why would I give away something without getting something in return. As the years went by, I continued to stonewall the association president, so he decided on a new tactic: whenever we would meet, he would gradually raise his voice, begin to threaten me, and drop in a few choice four-letter words. I always just sat there stoically until he finished his diatribe and then calmly would say, “Howard, I understand your position but I am not going to close the gate.” He then would continue with his temper tantrum.

By staying cool, I knew I was besting him. He wanted me to yell, scream, and curse, so he then could spread the word that the Head of School was petulant, immature, and unfit to run a school. He could rant and rave, but I knew in my professional capacity I had to stay calm. Deep down, I truly relished his eventual realization that no matter what he did, I wouldn’t lower myself to his level.

This week’s article reminded me of my experience with the neighborhood association president. He was like a begging or complaining child and I was the adult authority figure. As the article states, kids can be very manipulative in trying to get their way with their parents--and with teachers too. They know when they’re in a power struggle and when they get adults to lose their temper, they win. Adults often later come back to the child and apologize for losing their temper. Even if the child doesn’t get what he wants, she wins the power struggle by getting the adult to lower him/herself to the child.

The article posits some strategies to utilize to under- versus over-reactions to the child, and to, as mindfulness emphasizes, ‘thoughtfully and calmly respond versus instinctively and emotionally react.'

It can be challenging to keep one’s wits when pushed. As a young teacher, I definitely took the bait from some of my students. They wanted to see Mr. Marshall lose his temper and erupt in front of the class. My kids tried to do the same thing with my wife and me. 

So the next time your child or students start to get under your skin, take a deep breath, and tell yourself not to lose you cool!

Joe 

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As every parent experiences, not getting the response you want from your child can sometimes cause you to raise your voice or display visual frustration to the point where you are the one who is actually overreacting. And as we (logically) know, rarely does a louder and bigger reaction from us lead to a more calm and resolved situation with them. That’s why, the next time your child is pushing your buttons, you should consider underreacting to the behavior to see if your buttons suddenly become less enticing to push.

“There is a chance that these behaviors occur because your child is getting a kick out of your huge reactions,” psychologist Vanessa Kahlon wrote in her book How To Do Parenting With Confidence.

It’s important to note, though, that underreacting is not the same as ignoring a child’s behavior, Kahlon said.

“When you ignore a behavior or simply let it go, you run the risk of giving your child the idea that they are in charge of the situation,” Kahlon wrote. “While empowering children to have opinions and their own voice is a great life skill, helping children to understand that adults are in charge of situations will build a level of trust vital for future relationships.”

If your child runs away from you, doesn’t want to complete a task like cleaning up, or is generally disagreeable with your plans and expectations, try Kahlon’s steps for underreacting instead of yelling and chasing them down:

• Use a calm voice

• When your child is able to listen, state your expectation. (Like, “I expect you to come out and clean up your toys.”)

• If there is no response to your direction, add a time limit and consequence. (For example, “I expect you to come out and start cleaning up your toys. We planned to go to the park this afternoon, and we can’t go to the park unless the toys are packed away.”)

“To become better at underreacting, it’s important to develop healthy coping strategies that can help you stay calm and composed in the moment,” Kahlon said. “This might include techniques like deep breathing, mindfulness, or visualization exercises that can help you stay present and focused. It can also be helpful to identify your triggers and develop a plan for how to respond to challenging situations in a calm and measured way. This might involve taking a step back, giving yourself time to think, and responding in a way that is thoughtful and measured.”

Three times to underreact

During challenging behavior: “If a child is acting out or misbehaving, it can be tempting for parents to react with frustration, anger, or punishment. However, by underreacting and responding in a calm and measured way, parents can model for their child how to regulate their emotions and behavior in a stressful situation. This can help reduce the likelihood of the child escalating their behavior and can help promote positive behavior in the future along with not dealing with a power struggle,” Kahlon said.

During difficult emotions: All emotions are OK—but some are harder to work through, like anger, sadness, and frustration. “When a child is experiencing a difficult emotion, it can be helpful for parents to underreact and respond with empathy and understanding, rather than reacting with frustration or trying to fix the situation. This can help the child feel heard and supported, and can create a more positive and supportive parent-child relationship,” Kahlon said.

During upsetting events: Bad news can hit a family at any time, from an extremely personal crisis only affecting your household to frightening national and global news. Staying calm is a good way to model managing emotions for your child. If you are overwhelmed, it’s a good time to take a break. “This can help create a sense of stability and security for the child during a challenging time, and can help the family work together to find solutions and cope with the situation,” Kahlon said. “If a parent needs to take a ‘break’ to take care of themselves, let the family show ways one can take care of their own mental health. Children are always watching how we do things!”

Underreacting can be helpful whether you are parenting toddlers or teens. No matter your child’s age, focus on staying calm, modeling healthy emotional regulation, and responding in a rational and effective way.

“Children of all ages can benefit from seeing their parents respond to stress or challenging situations in a calm and rational manner. In fact, modeling effective emotion regulation and problem-solving skills can be especially important for teenagers, as they are developing their own sense of identity and learning how to navigate complex social and emotional situations,” Kahlon said.

Another opportunity to temper your reaction is when a struggling child pulls out the big guns with “I hate you!” or another cutting comment. Kahlon says moments like these show that the child feels safe enough with you to express their feelings. Thinking of it as a “love tap” can remind you that it’s not personal.

“It can be difficult for parents to see their child’s cutting words as ‘love taps,’ especially when those words are hurtful or disrespectful. However, it’s important to recognize that children often use words to express their emotions and that their behavior is a reflection of their needs and feelings, rather than a personal attack on the parent,” Kahlon said. “When a child says ‘I hate you,’ it may be a sign that they are feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or disconnected from their parent. By acknowledging and validating their feelings, parents can help their child feel heard and supported, even in difficult moments.”

The New Three R's of Education

This week's article summary is The New Three R's of Education.

The traditional three R’s of reading,’riting, ‘rithmetic remain the bull’s eye of school. 

Yet the new three R’s of relationships, repetitions, and routines are the vehicles through which the traditional R’s are achieved.

More and more educational research studies and subsequent articles and books highlight how vital teacher-student relationships are. Students need to know how much their teachers care and believe in them and truly see them as unique individuals of limitless potential. Similarly, students need to learn how to work and interact collaboratively with others, especially peers. Gone are the days when students worked independently at their desks on fill-in-the-blank worksheets. It’s the same for all of us adults: our personal and professional lives revolve around relationships.

As cognitive scientists continue to answer how students best learn, repetition is proving to be an effective learning tool. Most of us have known this intuitively, yet repetition too often gets associated with rote learning, which can be dull, tedious, and seemingly mindless. Still, it’s through practice that we master a skill. A few weeks ago I purchased three DIY bookcases from Ikea. I carefully followed the instructions as I constructed the first one and it took me about an hour to complete it due to a few missteps. However, by the time I got to third one, it took me only 15 minutes. I learned through repetition.

Routine in the classroom is similarly important. There is comfort for all of us within predictability. Yes, we all like the occasional unplanned day when we can spontaneously do whatever we want, but the bulk of our time is grounded in consistency. It’s why so many of many of us struggle with transition and change in our lives.

So, while reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic remain the goal of a good education, let’s extol relationships, repetition, and routines as crucial tools we need to achieve our goals!

Joe

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As parents, we all want to give our children the best possible start in life. One of the most important things we can do is to help them develop a love of learning that will last a lifetime. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were formerly the three "R's" that were emphasized in school, but as society's expectations have shifted, so have the responsibility put on schools. 

What are the most important skills for pupils to practice in the classroom? Relationships, repetition, and routines are the new three R's of education. 

Relationships: Nurturing and responsive interactions are the foundation of early learning and healthy development. Children interact with their carers, other family members, and other adults in their lives thousands of times every day, including early education teachers. Preschoolers and toddlers frequently interact with other children. When children connect with people regularly and positively, they build relationships that benefit their brain development and learning.

Repetitions: Children benefit from numerous learning experiences. Children can learn new skills or enhance existing ones by repeatedly hearing a teacher say a phrase or having multiple opportunities to crawl toward a favorite item or person. Some children require more practice or repetition than others. Repeated learning opportunities integrated into regular activities help all children because they improve the neural connections in their brains that promote growth and learning.

Routines: Regular activities and routines should include relationships and repetitions. Routines are well-known and usually entail multiple steps. Activities can be done on their own or as part of a routine (e.g., painting at an easel with a friend). Through everyday routines and activities, children can practice existing skills or learn new ones as they see fit.

A strong foundation will allow a child to reach his or her full potential. The three R's and the fundamental idea of assisting learners in discovering how to apply their knowledge will motivate children to work enthusiastically to develop their learning capacities. Children will also develop their personalities and learn from the environment if they follow the three R's rather than from books, it will help them understand better in the future. Connecting with people who can immediately teach them how to better understand their ecosystem by watching and implementing ideas that will benefit them directly in the future.

The Importance of Social Development in Kindergarten

This week's article summary is The Importance of Social Development in Kindergarten.

In our admission open house presentations, Brad and I talk a lot about how Trinity shapes our students’ academic and character foundation. As we delve deeper into just what character means at Trinity, Brad and I emphasize basic core values like empathy and integrity but spend the bulk of talking more generally about the importance of inter/intrapersonal skill/habit development. 

As you’ll see in this article, while there is a correlation between a student’s GPA and future success (job, salary, etc.), GPA is not only a result of a kid’s intelligence. In fact, a child’s EQ/Executive Function skills (attention, self-regulation of emotion, rationale decision-making) and relationships with others (cooperation, conflict resolution) play a much larger role than intelligence in overall success.

Furthermore, while IQ is more fixed, inter/intrapersonal skill development is malleable and teachable and very much influenced by home and school environment.

We know this at Trinity, hence the reason why we employ cooperative learning, emphasize a growth mindset (the power of ‘yet’), and ask our students to self-reflect and evaluate their progress in learning. 

Sadly to me, I still see non-educators focus too much on a child’s intelligence, rather than his/her attitude, flexibility, and willingness to work and adapt with others.

Any chance I get, I talk to our parents and other non-educators about the importance of a child’s EQ and its impact on his/her future.

Joe

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From an early age, we're led to believe our grades and test scores are the key to everything — namely, going to college, getting a job, and finding that glittery path to lifelong happiness and prosperity. 

But a recent study showed that when children learn to interact effectively with their peers and control their emotions, it can have an enormous impact on how their adult lives take shape.

In the study, kindergarten teachers evaluated the kids the Social Competence Scale by rating statements like "The child is good at understanding other's feelings" on a "Not At All/A Little/Moderately Well/Well/Very Well" scale. The research team used these responses to give each kid a "social competency score.” When each kid turned 25, the researchers gathered information about the now-grown-ups and analyzed whether these early social skills held any predictive value.

Here are the results:

Those good test scores we covet? They still matter, but maybe not for the reasons we thought: Traditional thinking says that if a kid gets good grades and test scores, he or she must be really smart, right? After all, there is a proven correlation between having a better GPA in high school and making more money later in life. But what that test score doesn't tell you is how many times a kid worked with a study partner to crack a tough problem, or went to the teacher for extra help, or resisted the urge to watch TV instead of preparing for a test. The researchers behind this project wrote, "Success in school involves both social-emotional and cognitive skills, because social interactions, attention, and self-control affect readiness for learning." That's a fancy way of saying that while some kids may just be flat-out brilliant, most of them need more than just smarts to succeed.

Skills like sharing and cooperating pay off later in life: We know we need to look beyond GPA to figure out which kids are on the right path. That's why the researchers zeroed in so heavily on that social competency score. What they found probably isn't too surprising: Kids who related well to their peers, handled their emotions better, and were good at resolving problems went on to have more successful lives. What's surprising is just how strong the correlation was. An increase of a single point in social competency score showed a child would be 54% more likely to earn a high school diploma, twice as likely to graduate with a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a stable, full-time job at age 25. The kids who were always stealing toys, breaking things, and having meltdowns? More likely to have run-ins with the law and substance abuse problems. 

Social behaviors can be learned and unlearned — meaning it's never too late to change: The researchers called some of these pro-social behaviors like sharing and cooperating "malleable," or changeable. Let's face it: Some kids are just never going to be rocket scientists. Turns out there are physical differences in our brains that make learning easier for some people than others. But settling disputes with peers? That's something kids (and adults) can always continue to improve on. And guess what? For a lot of kids, these behaviors come from their parents. The more you're able to demonstrate positive social traits like warmth and empathy, the better off your kids will be.

The bottom line? We need to do more than just teach kids information. We need to invest in teaching them how to relate to others and how to handle the things they're feeling inside. Ignoring social skills in our curricula could have huge ramifications for our kids down the road.

Why Repeating Yourself is a Good Thing

This week's article summary is  Why Repeating Yourself is a Good Thing.

A few years ago, I began to start most all-school meetings with a slide of Trinity’s mission. I figured framing all-school meetings with a reminder of why Trinity exists and what we believe would better focus our discussion and work—basically, how we “cherish childhood while shaping our students’ academic and character foundation.”

There have been times when I questioned if I need to continue doing this. Everyone knows our mission, right? If not the exact words, definitely its essence. 

Yet I still find myself putting the mission as the first slide in my presentations.

Well, Adam Grant (many of you read Think Again last summer) in his article below confirms my intuition: repetition is important and a great teaching technique.

When I taught 7th and 8th grade, I spent the bulk of my time on student study/organization skills and inter/intrapersonal development. (Academic content was ironically a distant third goal.) I would sometimes grow weary with all the times I had to repeat myself about how my students could organize themselves at school, in the classroom, at home. It seemed the more I repeated myself, the less impact I had on my students. 

But looking through the lens of repetition, I understand that I was providing my students with what they needed as emerging adolescents who were now expected to be independent learners as the complexity and volume of material presented was intensifying. They needed constant repetition about study and organizational skills. And almost all of them ended up being very successful students (and great people) in high school, college, and beyond.

Similarly, whenever my family—a core of about 10 people—gets together, we inevitably repeat the same family stories over and over. Over the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, we regale one another with family stories we’ve heard over and over. While redundant, these stories in essence define the Marshall family history—what my great grandparents, grandparents, parents, siblings, kids, and now grandkids did. Even though we’ve heard these stories —now greatly exaggerated—no one ever comments when a family member says, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”

So whenever frustration mounts when you find yourself repeating yourself over and over in school and at home, rest assured that repetition is an essential part of the learning process!

Joe

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In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was preparing his speech for the March on Washington. When he asked his advisors for feedback on a direction he was considering, they shot it down. “You’ve used it too many times already.”

King took their advice and scrapped his idea.

Many people have an allergic reaction to repetition. When politicians repeat their stump speeches on the campaign trail, we judge them as inauthentic. When colleagues repeat their ideas in meetings, we tune them out. When our spouses repeat their favorite stories, we doze off.

But it turns out that repeating yourself is vital to effective communication. Psychologists have long demonstrated that with repeated exposure to ideas, we start to like them more. As the saying goes, the greatest barrier to communication is the illusion that it occurred. Reinforcing a message makes it more familiar and more memorable.

Yes, it’s possible to overdo it. But current research shows that it’s better to overcommunicate and be seen as redundant than to undercommunicate and miss the mark.

Although they’re less likely to be penalized for saying too much, leaders err on the side of saying too little. In an analysis of thousands of 360 feedback assessments, leaders were over nine times more likely to be criticized for undercommunicating than overcommunicating. In an experiment, people who undercommunicated were judged as unqualified to lead because they lacked empathy. When you hesitate to repeat your ideas, you don’t just fail to get your point across—you also come across as if you don’t care.

Martin Luther King Jr. came to that realization. When he took the stage at the March on Washington, his script didn’t have the familiar lines that his advisors had discouraged. Partway through his speech, he changed his mind and decided to repeat himself. In front of 250,000 people, he left his prepared comments behind and recited the lines he’d delivered many times before.

The phrase he repeated was “I have a dream…”

If King hadn’t repeated those lines, his speech might have never changed the world.

It didn’t matter that he’d said it in other speeches on other stages. In the span of two minutes that day, he repeated “I have a dream” eight times. It became the title of his speech, and it became the refrain for a watershed in civil rights.

Great communication is like a song. It isn’t enough to hear it once. You don’t know the melody until you hear it multiple times. You don’t know the chorus by heart until you’ve repeated it many times.

If you want to be heard, it helps to spell out your idea more than once. If you want to move people, you have to say it more often. If people aren’t telling you you’re repeating yourself, you might not be communicating enough.

Does Grit Really Help a Student Improve

This week's article summary is Grit Has Been Called the Secret of Success: New Science Suggests It Isn't and it's a complement to the previous summary.

Angela Duckworth is the guru of the importance of grit in school (and life) in success. New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick even hired her a number of years ago to develop a grit assessment for potential draft selections to identify college football players with high levels of mental toughness and fortitude.

But just as the Patriots have had a pretty spotty track record with their draft picks, Duckworth’s work and research on grit are being questioned more and more.

One of the biggest criticisms is that while grit, resilience, and effort are important to success, ability and intelligence play important roles as well. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never throw a baseball 90 MPH or understand the writings of Stephen Hawking—trust me on this, as I’ve tried to do both many times.

What does this mean for schools?

We need to be careful not to over promise students that they can do and be anything with effort and perseverance alone. Succeeding involves many factors, including self-reflection, re-strategizing, guidance from mentors, and support from others.

Like much research, educators excitedly grabbed onto Duckworth’s research, hoping emphasis on grit would be the magic answer to success for every student.

But as we all know, it takes a lot more than persistence to thrive and flourish.

Joe

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University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth earned more than 23 million views as a TED speaker and glowing headlines by touting grit. This concept, she insisted, helped predict who would get ahead in life and can be cultivated if you want to increase your odds of success. 

No wonder the media went wild. There are few things the public wants to hear about more than shortcuts to success. But according to writer Jesse Singal, author of the new book, The Quick Fix, there's a big problem with Duckworth's ideas about grit -- they don't actually appear to be true. 

"Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success but Duckworth is the one who found it," raved Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert's in his blurb for Duckworth's book, Grit. With hype like that, how could Singal resist investigating? But as he dug into the research, Singal realized the evidence for grit doesn't match the enthusiasm. 

In fact, he uncovered three major problems with Duckworth's claims. 

First, grit seems to overlap significantly with conscientiousness, one of the Big Five Personality traits that measures how likely people are to do the things they commit to doing. Duckworth says that grit differs subtly from conscientiousness, but research hasn't backed that up. Which makes grit look a lot like a shiny new name for a well-known idea. 

Second, even if you accept grit is somehow distinct from conscientiousness, it doesn't seem to be all that powerful a predictor of success. A 2020 study found that "intelligence contributes 48-90 times more than grit to educational success and 13 times more to job-market success," 

And finally, even if grit were a real thing and it did matter a lot for success, there is basically no evidence that we know how to intervene to change how much a person has.

Both Singal's article and his book offer a deeper dive into the topic, but the basic takeaway of his work is clear-- be skeptical of anyone, offering shortcuts to success. 

People have been chewing over life's biggest, gnarliest challenges for millennia and haven't found any magic bullets yet. No blogger or professor is likely to suddenly uncover a way to avoid the hard work of achieving great things or becoming a better person anytime soon.