Head Teacher Blog #6

What an end to last week: wet and windy on Friday – storm Callum certainly hit Dursley!
Clearly, we have to show GRIT to get through the inclement weather and it reminded me that we are as a school learning how to show that grit and resilience. Thinking about GRIT…….let me recommend something I watched via a TED talk which then encouraged me to read the book. Angela Duckworth was a teacher in America and became absorbed by trying to understand what it was that made some students successful and some unsuccessful.
Watch it here:-
www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance
Its only 5 minutes do well worth putting it on and watching it.
Essentially, those with GRIT and those who were able to look at their mistakes as a learning experience, were the ones who were successful. She defines GRIT as “passion and perseverance”. In summary she says:
One way to think about grit is to consider what grit is not.
Grit is not talent. Grit is not luck. Grit is not how intensely, for the moment, you want something.
Instead, Grit is about having what some researchers call an “ultimate concern”–a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. Grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you make mistakes. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow.
Talent and luck matter to success. Talent and luck are no guarantee of Grit. In the very long run, I think Grit may matter as least as much, if not more.
It reminds me of my one and only marathon, which I ran before many of you were born! I only got through because of passion and perseverance. Life is like the marathon isn’t it? That’s why we need GRIT.
(By the way, a man dressed in a bear costume overtook me at 20 miles; it took all the GRIT that I had left to continue!). ... See MoreSee Less

October 16th  ·