Arming preservice teachers with grit and strategies is not the way to prepare them for a profession they chose based on their underlying beliefs and sense of creativity.
Some lawmakers and alternative teacher preparation programs believe that preparing teachers is relatively straightforward — find individuals with grit, give them a bunch of proven teaching strategies, and get them into a classroom. But is building a stronger, committed teacher really that simple? Proponents of grit would argue that gritty new teachers are more likely to tough it out in teaching, that they will learn and adapt to the job regardless of its complexity and difficulty. However, the grit-and-strategies approach ignores that most teachers are drawn to education based on their beliefs and sense of creativity — things that light fires and provide inspiration and lead to a meaningful, long-term commitment to teaching. To develop new teachers who are committed to the profession, we must develop in them the three E’s: Envision, Engage, and Execute.
Envision
Most new teachers choose to become teachers based on a set of beliefs, such as helping others and sharing knowledge, formed from their personal observations and experiences as adolescent students that often become the driving force of their teaching ambitions. A focus on grit and teaching strategies disregards the importance of cultivating these beliefs. Instead, we must help new teachers create a teaching vision that is informed by what they want for students, themselves, and the profession. This vision can help new teachers rise above daily classroom challenges because their vision is a constant reminder of why they became teachers and is more significant than any difficult classroom moment. The teaching vision also helps identify teaching and learning theories and strategies that have deeper meaning to them and their students.
Engage
Once they understand their teaching vision, new teachers can engage with the content of teaching in more meaningful ways. An exclusive focus on grit and teaching strategies can discredit the need to understand theory related to teaching and learning. Such theories create a foundation for new teachers to thoughtfully engage with curriculum and instruction concepts and application. Effective teaching requires creative and critical thinking skills that must be taught to new teachers so that they can engage. These skills lead to understanding, rationalizing, and reinventing instructional decisions based on the foundations formed from teaching and learning theory. Creative and critical thinking skills, grounded in theory, also promote reasoning that will let new teachers see connections between theory, instruction, and student needs.
Execute
We cannot ignore essential teaching strategies as we prepare new teachers. These strategies help new teachers build tools to manage a classroom and provide instruction. But rote memorization of teaching strategies and gritty application of those strategies does not lead to thoughtful and effective teaching. Successful execution of any strategy involves thinking about the desired outcome and the variables related to that outcome and then having the confidence to carry out the strategy. Teaching strategies often require modification; rarely are they of the one-size-fits-all variety. New teachers must understand essential teaching strategies, but they also must be allowed to make decisions about those strategies, including situational timing and modification, through their teaching vision using creative and critical thinking skills.
Emphasizing grit and strategies during preparation might help new teachers survive the start of their careers. But we should want and expect more from teacher preparation than just survival. We should aim for long-term, meaningful commitment to teaching. The three E’s can provide a more robust and meaningful teacher preparation experience. New teachers should have the grit and strategies necessary to navigate difficult moments, but they also must learn how to find the joy in every corner of their classrooms; there are bound to be more of those if new teachers are prepared to find them.
Citation: Benedetti, C. (2016). Backtalk: The trouble with grit. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (7), 80.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Benedetti
CHRISTOPHER BENEDETTI is associate chair of education and an assistant professor of educational leadership at Western State Colorado University, Gunnison, Colo.
