Boundin' (Resilience)

Dec 7

What is Resilience (the R in GRIT)?
Resilience– The ability to bounce back from failure or discouragements. 

Please show the following video (4:42):

PIXAR 2003: Boundin
Posted by Full HD -│♪│ VIDEOCLIPs & VIDEOs │♪│ on Sunday, April 11, 2010

Classroom discussion:

1. How did The Lamb use resilience to overcome his challenges?
2. What was a time in your life where you felt vulnerable (or shorn)?  :)
3. Who is the Jackalope - or support person - in your life?
4. What strategies work for you when you're trying to REBOUND?
5. How can you be a Jackalope - or support person - for someone else?

5 Best Ways to Build Resilience

1. Pump Up Your Positivity
• Resilient people... tend to find some silver lining in even the worst of circumstances.
2. Live to Learn From Your Experiences
• “What I see resilient people do is immediately look at the problem and say, ‘What’s the solution to that? What is this trying to teach me?'"
3. Open Your Heart
• Acts of kindness [both given and received], and the serotonin boosts that accompany them, have a cumulative effect.
4. Take Care of Yourself
• Good health — and a regular routine of healthy habits — are foundational to both mental and emotional resilience.
5. Hang On To Humor
• Laughing through adversity can be profoundly pain relieving, for both the body and mind.

(courtesy of Experience Life: https://experiencelife.com/article/the-5-best-ways-to-build-resiliency/) 

Growth Mindset

Nov 16

Today we're going to talk about having a Growth Mindset (the G in GRIT). By the end of this lesson, students will understand:

• The brain is malleable
• Using strategies and help from others will help us change brain pathways for growth and brain strength
• Doing hard work is the best way to make the brain stronger and smarter

Watch “Neuroplasticity” by Sentis (2:03). This is a good visual introduction to the concept of
how the brain can be rewired as we learn and think differently.

(If that link doesn't work, please copy and paste THIS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpfYCZa87g into your web browser.)

After the video:

1. Please share a personal story about a time you had to work hard to get better at something and relate it to the video. In this story, highlight:

• Hard work
• Strategies
• Help from others

OR you can share this story:

"When I was in middle school, I remember struggling with adding negative numbers. I had a hard time figuring out what a ‘negative’ even meant when talking about a number - how can you have less than nothing? I ended up going through many practice problems and continuing to get many of them wrong. I was a very shy kid, so I didn’t ask my teacher many questions. My thought was that I had reached ‘the peak’ of my math talent, and it was all downhill from here. I eventually asked my mom about this topic and she explained to me the basic concept of negative numbers. This helped me understand it a little, but it was still fuzzy to me. I then researched online for some real-life contexts to show what these mysterious numbers represented outside of some abstract universe. Some of them made sense, and others didn’t. I still didn’t entirely get it and I was so frustrated that I wanted to just give up (or continue hoping that negative numbers were not going to appear in math class ever again). I started to dislike math simply because I couldn’t understand it anymore. Instead of entirely giving up on my academic career, I eventually mustered up the courage to ask my teacher for help as well. She explained it in a few different ways, and gave me new strategies to try out. After some practice with these new strategies, I started to solidify my understanding of negatives which allowed me to quickly pick up basic algebra afterwards. While it was a lot of work and I wanted to give up at many points during my journey, I eventually was able to ‘rewire’ my brain so that negative numbers actually made sense to me."

2. Ask students to share a story about a time that they made their brains smarter. This leads to a discussion about how working hard, taking on challenges, and finding the right strategy can make people smarter.

3. While students are sharing, you can make a two-column list on the whiteboard about the beliefs and behaviors of a growth mindset and how it compares to a fixed mindset. Urge students to map out how beliefs influence behaviors which ultimately lead to results.

Sample: