Venite...Studete...Discite

Welcome! Venite...Studete...Discite is the Professional Development Committee blog for Blair Academy. We hope that the blog will serve as a valuable professional development resource for all members of the Blair Academy faculty & staff and foster discussion, exploration, disagreement, collaboration, and most importantly, help each member of the Blair Faculty grow professionally and help us all serve our students better both inside and outside of the classroom.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Debating Quitting and Grit

Jason's last post is fascinating and touches on aspects of grit I hope we're courageous enough to address some time in the future.

I happened across an article on The Atlantic in which a mother advocates quitting for her children. She makes several points, but the one which resonated most strongly with me is that perseverance eliminates an element of exploration in children. Socal's social and classist critique of grit aside, we may be best served to view 'grit' as one of a multitude of strengths our kids might possess, a unique combination of which make our kids themselves.
The Atlantic: Teaching Kids to Quit: Persistence is a virtue, but there's no need to fetishize it
and
BrainChild Magazine: Should You Let Your Child Quit?

Thursday, February 6, 2014

A Response to "Grit"

I've stumbled across a number of online debates recently of Paul Tough's work on Grit and found the blog post at the link below interesting (be sure to read the comments to see some very thoughtful issues raised and read Tough's response to some of them).

http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/does-grit-need-deeper-discussion/