Creating a Culture of Grit with Posters

My action plan is about creating a culture of grit, in my classroom, the students I teach and the overall school community. While I still feel a little bit fuzzy on how to tackle this, I did come up with some small ideas when we were using the design process during our second F2F session.

One of the small ideas that I wanted to mention in this post was about using posters to try to not only motivate, but be a reminder of the lens through which we can view our everyday lives. I started this task by performing a good old Google search. I searched “fostering grit in the classroom” and came across a whole bunch of resources by Sylvia Duckworth. I found this a little bit amusing in that my action plan was inspired by reading “Grit” by Angela Duckworth. What are the odds of that, two different Duckworth individuals studying Grit! After visiting Sylvia’s website I found out that she is a sketchnoter who is passionate about helping educators build grit and a growth mindset in themselves and their students. Perfect right? I immediately created a folder in my Google drive titled “Grit/ Growth Mindset” where I started to save resources I could reference in the future, primarily directed from her website.

The second thing I did was look at my classroom to see where was a good location to put these posters. The posters are all standard paper size. I have a couple of bulletin boards that need some love, but they are in locations in my classroom that don’t really promote observation. (Shoved in a corner between lab equipment shelves and windows). I thought that the best place would be near the door where students are always passing by. Since there is the thermostat, fire alarm and fire safety image already there I decided to arrange it in a collage as shown below. (I realize it is hard to visualize the posters here and doesn’t necessarily look amazing).

After placing these posters students began to comment. Some in a sarcastic manner “Really, can I do hard things?” and some in an inquisitive manner “interesting posters”, “I’ve never really considered that”, “I guess I don’t normally think about the work people put into things when I look at their successes”. Either way, it generated conversations that hadn’t existed in my student body before.

My favourite posters of these are the “iceberg effects”, “growth mindset versus fixed mindset” and the “you can do hard things” poster that I have included throughout this blog.
My favourite part of the iceberg effect is that it is not only a reminder to students but also to myself. It is easy to see the successes of others and compare yourself to them. It is easy to focus on my not-so-great lessons, stressful student interactions and messy desk when I hear about the great lessons, amazing student interactions and organization of other teachers who seem to just have it all figured out. What I need to remember is that there is a lot of hard work, dedication, sacrifice and persistence working behind the scenes of success. We often do not witness each other’s failures but dwell on our own. I am slowly realizing that although my “concrete” action plan is to work on the grit of our student body at SJK, it is helping me build more grit within myself.