Blog Post #13

Watch the TedTalk video and explain what can we learn from Angela Lee Puckworth's and her goal in motivating students.



Angela Lee Puckworth resigned from a very solid job in management consulting to be a 7th grade math teacher in a New York City Public school. She started noticing that the scores on test she would grade didn't resemble her students IQ scores. Her "smart" students weren't doing well. She felt that the material could easily be learned by practicing more and more problems and eventually the information would stick. After years of teaching 7th grade math she went on to graduate school for psychology. It was then that she realized that it wasn't IQ score's or standardized test scores that predict the success rates of individuals. It all boils down to grit. Mrs. Puckworth went on to explain her meaning of grit. Grit is having passion and perseverance for long term goals. She did a research study for predicting successors or failures of military cadets, spelling bee participants and rookie teachers in inner-city schools. The people in the study proved that those with stamina turn out to be successful in the end. Those who were "grittier" worked hard to make a goal a reality. She stated that the idea of "growth mindset" is a way to show students the development of the brain and its rate of change. If students see that their brains are developing then they won't feel that they are stuck in a failure because in the back of their minds they know they will learn from the mistakes and failures because it is a apart of growing up. Showing them the development of their brains will push students for motivation and drive to do what they think is best and hopefully will encourage them to strive to be successful, enabling their inner grit.