Why Some Students Fail
and Others Succeed

Answering the question of why some students fail or succeed is an important one for to Rachel and I as parents.

We are big believers in learning about and sharing information that will help other parents improve the capability, potential, and broaden the scope of experience for their children.  This time we are sharing a fantastic video covering the 'The power of passion and perseverance' by Angela Lee Duckworth. 

At 27, Angela made a career dramatic change and left management consulting to teach grade 7 math to students in the New York City public schools. 

Here are a few points that jumped out the most to me:

"...what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?"

"What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough."

"So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

Grit Quiz for Students

Curious how much grit you have checkout Angela's grit quiz here and see where you are at.  

Try it for your child as well.  We have found that building activities like music lessons into the lives of our children that build grit is critical to their current and future success.  

If you would like help your child develop grit and learn to play music start lessons at DeGazon Music for music lessons.