Persistence

Perseverance, what does it mean to you?  Perseverance to me means determination, willpower, purpose, courage and strength of mind.  In short it means getting the job done with/without challenges and obstacles.  Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology from the University of Pennsylvania defines it as “grit”.  Check here to read more about Perseverance and her “grit” theory.  Being a kindergarten teacher, I use perseverance everyday in my classroom.   Ultimately I have a job to do and it looks very different with each student that I have.  With some students, getting the job done is very easy as those are the students who love school and learning comes easily to them.  The test is then to keep them challenged.  On the other hand, getting the job done is a little more difficult because some students have difficulty learning and it doesn’t always come easy for them.  The challenge then is to make that learning happen and foster a love of learning deep within those students to motivate them.  In kindergarten, the area where I need to encourage and teach the most perseverance is writing.  Often children enter kindergarten with poor or little fine motor skills.  They think that when they pick up a pencil that they should just be able to write words.  Unfortunately, for some, making mistakes is extremely painful (and it can literally take months to teach them this).  I try to teach perseverance by modeling and explaining that even I make mistakes.  I model what it looks like to make a mistake.  I model what it looks like to “brush it off” and try again.  I model how to have self-control when I make a mistake.  I model how to have perseverance even when I’m frustrated.  Only when they truly understand that in kindergarten mistakes are made all the time....that is how we learn.