True Grit

Is academic achievement the be-all and end-all?

 

Is IQ the best predictor of success in school and in life?

 

 

Kipp, NYC actually uses a grit report card.

 

Here’s the research behind the importance of grit – as well as a layman’s intro to the idea.

"Who is successful here and why?"

What is the single best predictor of success in life (and in school)?
Not social intelligence,
not good looks,
not good health,
and not IQ...

...it is grit. What is grit?

Hear Angela Duckworth talk about grit.

for parents

From the Challenge/Success web site:

We know that parents want what is best for their kids, but knowing what’s best isn’t always easy. What many of us are doing right now, with the best of intentions, is focusing too much on short-term results instead of raising adults whose talents are fully realized, recognized, and valued in a 21st-century economy. Research tells us what children need is emotional support, parental supervision, adequate sleep, healthy eating habits, physical and intellectual challenges, resilience, and time to reflect, play, and plan. With our Challenge Success Parent Education Program, parents benefit from hearing university-based research translated into practical, everyday strategies that they can use to be better parents and raise kids who will thrive. We currently offer parents a number of live  and online classes and videos, school and community presentations and a series of parenting guidelines.

raising successful children

"Raising Successful Children" from Madeline Levine.  Here are a few phrases to tease you:

"HANGING back and allowing children to make mistakes is one of the greatest challenges of parenting."

"Mastery of the world is an expanding geography for our kids..."

"This may seem counterintuitive, but praising children’s talents and abilities seems to rattle their confidence." 

 "If you can’t stand to see your child unhappy, you are in the wrong business."

"...the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging and sometimes devastating demands of life."

 "it is always a telltale sign of overparenting when they talk about how 'we’re applying to Columbia.'"

"Parents also have to make sure their own lives are fulfilling. There is no parent more vulnerable to the excesses of overparenting than an unhappy parent." 

helicopter parents

This clip from the tv show Portlandia takes helicopter parenting to a new low!  Thanks to Post Oak High School director, James Moudry for sending this along.

Flatline

"Arousal associated with emotion, cognition and attention."  ENGAGEMENT.  Head in the game.  Heart in the game.  Hand in the game.

A study of students by Rosalind Picard from MIT.

Flatline.

No arousal.  When?

While watching tv and during class.

Class?  flatline?

Flatline.

the RIGHT WAY to raise a child

No Big Deal, but This Researcher's Theory Explains Everything About How Americans Parent

By Nicholas Day, Slate (from April 10, 2013)

"Every society has what it intuitively believes to be the right way to raise a child, what Harkness calls parental ethnotheories. (It is your mother-in-law, enlarged to the size of a country.) These are the choices we make without realizing that we're making choices. Not surprisingly, it is almost impossible to see your own parental ethnotheory: As I write in BabyMeets World, when you're under water, you can't tell that you're wet.

But ethnotheories are distinct enough, at least to an outsider, that they are apparent in the smallest details. If you look just at the words parents use to describe their children, you can almost always predict where you are in the world. In other words, your most personal observations of your child are actually cultural constructions."

Thanks to Rhonda Durham from ISAS for sending this along.