Countless stumbles, topples, and face-plants eventually led us to walking and then running to explore the world around us. Through mostly humorous grunts, squeaks, squawks, and yowls we gained facility with a mother tongue, giving us the ability to communicate our needs to those around us. Without perseverance neither of those vital life skills would be possible. How quickly we let slip our grasp of the relentless lesson perseverance taught us, enabling us to learn to walk and talk. Fostering and recognizing perseverance in students should be an achievement goal in its own right.
The video below happened to grab my attention the other day as I was doing a quick blog check of one my frequent favorites reads, The Fischbowl . The story of how Myshkin Ingawale tried and failed, but eventually succeeded, in creating a new medical device to diagnose anemia non-invasively connected in a timely way with work I have been doing recently with students. A group of 5th & 6th grade students chose to produce a short documentary video for the National History Day competition. The process of making a video is nothing if not a study in perseverance. After careful preparation and planning comes the actual recording. Therein lies the caveat. Students quickly come to see that even when it seems to be going good, and the words are finally flowing fluently, the inevitable happens. A door is opened, someone sneezes or coughs, a paper is rattled. "CUT!" Getting it all just right takes many repetitions and a good measure of luck. Making mistakes, even failing, and then persevering is essential and vital to learning. Students focused on success and achievement only learn to have an aversion to mistakes and risk taking that can paralyze the learning process and certainly stymie creativity.
Being able to hold it together and to keep reaching for your goal is perseverance. And perfection is not a goal, it is an ideal. Giving students the opportunity to work on projects that are by their nature are studies in perseverance, and the chance to learn that success is not perfection, is a necessity. The lessons learned can be used as reference when it comes to areas of study where students have been trained to avoid persistence. Math and reading take a hard hit when it comes to students' capacity to persevere. Subjects perceived as individual learning ladders to climb many times leave students stranded with what must feel like a too short ladder. Connecting successes from other areas of work and being given credit for perseverance as well as measured achievement can make a big difference in overall performance.
Let's make the old college try an elementary, middle, and high school try!
