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When Grit Is Not Enough
October 3, 2017
The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human.
-Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018, Author

"The first time I heard a preschooler explaining a classmate’s disruptive behavior, I was surprised at how adult her four-year-old voice sounded," wrote Aisha Sultan. "Her classmate 'doesn’t know how to sit still and listen,' she said to me, while I sat at the snack table with them. He couldn’t learn because he couldn’t follow directions, she explained, as if she had recently completed a behavioral assessment on him.

"This precocious little girl talked about her classmate matter-of-factly and without any malice…What the little girl didn’t know about her classmate was that his family life was chaotic, without consistent routines or caregivers. He had suffered some traumas at home, which showed in his behavior at school.

"I was reminded of this conversation during Tyrone C. Howard’s presentation on how student culture affects learning. 'We are asking students to change a belief system without changing the situation around them,' he said. It can be irresponsible and unfair to talk about grit without talking about structural challenges... So, what are those challenges?"

These are just a few Howard cites:

  • "7 out of 30 live in poverty...
  • 1 out of 30 are homeless;
  • 6 out of 30 are victims of abuse."

Sultan goes on to explain: "Howard said that exposure to trauma has a profound impact on cognitive development and academic outcomes, and schools and teachers are woefully unprepared to contend with these realities. Children dealing with traumatic situations should not be seen as pathological…Instead, educators need to recognize the resilience they are showing already."

Source: "When Grit Isn’t Enough," by Aisha Sultan, November 30, 2015. Education Writers Association. 





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Comments (4)

Displaying All 4 Comments
Hayley · October 03, 2017
Michigan, United States


I am currently a college student in my fourth year getting close to finishing my childhood development degree. When I think about a child's behavior in school I think it directly correlates to their home life. I would have to completely agree with Beth, that what is happening in the US also correlates to how a child behaves at home and at school. I think that in order to help children, we need to make help for the families also accessible.

Francis Wardle · October 03, 2017
CSBC
Denver, CO, United States


It seems to me that we are asking early childhood teachers, providers, and caregivers to do more and more, yet refuse to pay them or to reimburse them for the training required. Further, while experts continue to tell us that more and more young children come to our programs with emotional needs, our standards and expectations continue to focus on academic skill development and inappropriate behavioral expectations.

Laura · October 03, 2017
NJ, United States


I thought this piece was leaning towards a "children understand Atypical development without judgment" theme. I think we also have to remember that development is not always tied to "something is happening at home". Sometimes it is just a lagging skill and requires observation, experience, and intentional teaching. Rarely do educators look at a lag in one-on-one correlation with a lense of "something must be going on at home". Yet a failure to develop the ability to name emotions or read emotions in others is often viewed as "something is going on at home". Granted often something is going on. However, we need to approach social/emotional develop in similar ways to other domains: observe, reflect and plan for development. We can see development nonjudgmentally as this young girl need and be the educator who "figures out what is getting in the way" so that we can support development.

Beth Engelhardt · October 03, 2017
University of Dayton
Dayton, ohio, United States


AS I read the article a common thought came back to me.
We talk about all of these issue that are impacting our children but does anyone connect the dots?
The trauma at home and the trauma in our world specifically in the US has to be connected to the lack of nurturing and the chaos many of our children are exposed to on a regular basis.
It reminds me of cancer. We are so focused on the cure and no one talks about the causes that we aren't willing to change. How sad to think we are not willing to focus on the causes and help the families.



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