Fostering Grit, Book Review

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illustration by Sam Patterson
ACSD has released a great series of books, their Arias series. These are short, texts that run about 50 pages on paper, the busy teacher's version of a chapter book. There are four in the series and the second I read was Fostering Grit by Thomas R. Hoerr A copy of each title was provided to me for review, by ASCD.

 Fostering Grit is a great primer on active teaching for socio-emotional growth.  I like Hoerr's perspective on frustration challenge ans support.  It is really about helping students become empowered and resilient problem solvers.  I thought his connection between project based learning and GRIT was a great example.  
The book is clear and it reads like a well-planned PD session.  There are solid examples and resources as well as invitations to create your own plans and to connect to your own experience.  
I think it is important that we teach kids to keep trying, to view frustration as an invitation for innovation.  I think this quick read is a great place to start and there are many resources mentioned in the text for further exploration.

Comments

kim/the maker mom said…
As the parent of two "high ability", g/t (pick your label- they just learned more quickly and with less effort than their grade-age peers) kids, I feel my kids were often cheated out of opportunities to hone their intellectual chops, because it wasn't until the later grades (high school for my oldest, my youngest is still biding his time in middle school) that they were truly pushed and consistently challenged in the classroom. When my older one took an enrichment class where he started to learn programming (Greenfoot), the teacher told me that some educators argued that teaching young kids to code was simply too frustrating and felt it be reserved for older students. That was years ago. The tide is changing, but slowly.
November 12, 2013 at 7:56 AM
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