To accomplish we must persist. To achieve we must accomplish.

by Stephani Treadwell

Achievement typically measures an externally imposed standard. (Common Core State Standards CCSS)

Accomplishment typically describes an internally motivated goal. (Personal interests)

Patty O’Grady Ph.D, Positive Psychology in the Elementary School Classroom

 

Children in poverty have a tendency to struggle in school academically. Educators who lovingly work with these children, feel the only way to change the student’s outcome is to change their state of poverty. The only way to change their state of poverty is for the child to achieve academically. It is a vicious, impossible cycle if it is true that children in poverty are doomed to poor academic outcomes.

I know children from poverty who excel academically. Search the internet and find a thousand examples of children from poverty that have gone on to succeed and escape the cycle.

What made these children the exceptions?

The children I knew had one thing in common, accomplishment. They struggled to solve a problem important to them or found a passion for something that interested them. They pursued it until they accomplished it. Through their struggles, they learned persistence. Persistence was their exceptionality.

Rarely, do we persist at something that is externally imposed. (Achievement) We do persist with internal motivations. (Accomplishment) When we are accomplished, then we can achieve.

The skill of persistence carries to other things, once we have learned to use it. (Such as, college homework that I had to read three times just to get the information past my apathy.)  Persistence isn’t learned through actions that we are not personally invested in. We learn to persist in things we accomplish. Things that we are internally motivated to do.

Most children of poverty lack the opportunities to gain accomplishment and therefore lack persistence. Without persistence, they lack the ability to achieve.

Inner city, poor elementary children live in a box. (Usually an apartment.) There are no opportunities to set their sights on an accomplishment. There are no music lessons for them. There are no dance lessons for them. There is no opportunity to grow a garden, play on a team, draw or paint. They don’t get to build the go cart or the tree house. Many times they don’t get to cook because fresh foods are expensive and processed, microwave foods are cheaper.

There is no opportunity to persist in something they are invested in. If we don’t build persistence in small children it will be too late by middle school, when we finally give them some options for accomplishment through sports, drama, art, music, cooking and science labs. It is too late at this point in time.

To gain persistence our elementary students need to accomplish something they are invested in. I can promise you they are not invested in math worksheets or spelling tests. There is no dance or song a teacher can do to make the CCSS an internal investment to a six year old child.

 

Persistence Problem 2: Accomplishment comes through persistence. Persistence comes through struggle.

Our brains build new pathways when need for a pathway is presented. Our brains build new pathways when we struggle.

For some reason struggle has become something modern parents and teachers try to avoid at all costs. One little lip quiver and the adults go overboard to remove any stress. Parents run interference for any emotional stressor. Teachers break tedious work down into bite sized pieces and bribe the children take the next bite. (We train teachers to do this through “scaffolding” for students. I do. We do. You do.)

We hand awards to every child so they won’t feel any angst. Children aren’t stupid, they know they didn’t earn a reward. The only message they get is that they don’t need to make an effort because they will get the reward anyway. They don’t need persistence to be rewarded. They don’t need to be accomplished to receive the benefits of achievement.

Our children receive good grades on their report cards, but those grades are not reflected on the standardized tests. I have had a long look at this at my school. When I watch the students and teachers in the classroom, I see students who can do the classwork with the prodding and pushing of their teachers. This is not internal motivation. This does not create accomplishment and persistence.

The students use the teacher’s (classwork) or parent’s (homework) persistence to achieve the grade. When they take a standardized test, the teacher is not allowed to interact with the students and therefore they need to rely on their own persistence to achieve. They don’t have persistence and therefore are not achieving on the standardized tests.  

 

Addressing the Issue

Since persistence is learned through becoming accomplished, to help our students we need to give students the opportunity to stretch themselves through internally motivated goals. Learning persistence is a choice that cannot be forced through externally set standards. We also need to stop using the adult’s persistence to replace the child’s and require the child to develop its own persistence.

I went on a search for internally motivated learning experiences for my young students.  These experiences must require struggle to develop persistence but keep us on track for the Common Core State Standards. I used the internet with the search words of, “experience learning” and the first thing that came up was (4-H.org). The 4-H curriculum uses the experiential learning model. It is a five-step model of learning. Students experience, share, process, generalize and then apply what they learned.

4-H has been in existence for a long time. I was not a 4-H member.

Some of their materials are out of date and do not meet my needs as they currently stand. The newer materials are exactly what I need.

Last year the school received a Guhl grant from the Albuquerque Public Schools Foundation to help us with implementing 4-H as a school wide program. We will have been experimenting with the idea for exactly one year on January 3 2018.

It has done good things for the school in the simplistic way we have tried to integrate it into what already exists. Convincing the school community that going all in and leaving what is established is difficult. The children do not need convincing at all.

I ache with impatience as I see the potential. If I had resources and flexibility to start this all over again, with what I know now, I would. I don’t have those resources and so I must practice patience and persistence. I see hope.

Persistence leads to accomplishment and accomplishment to achievement. I must persist in accomplishing the change to internally motivated instruction that addresses the Common Core State Standards so that all my students experience achievement.