I was really hoping that the flowers in my pots would make it past Halloween. I took these pictures late in October. I was thrilled that they had lasted this long! I planted them mid-May and and five months later they were still making me happy! I must have known their time was short when I took the shots, as we had a hard freeze just a few days later and all the flowers suddenly met their fate. |
A week or so later, I was cleaning up the dead flowers from all the pots by the patio, and I saw this! This beautiful little flower, in the midst of brown leaves, was thriving in the cold dirt, in spite of the colder temperatures and fewer daylight hours. Persist!
As I thought about this tough little flower and how persistent it was, two similar words popped into my mind: tenacity and perseverance. I have always believed that one of my strengths is perseverance and that I succeeded in high school, college, my career, and this game called life because of it. To this day, if I am working out a tough math problem or puzzle, I won’t give up on it until it is solved. Similarly, when I encounter a new technology tool, or have an issue with a current one, I won’t let it go until I have it figured out. When I was an undergrad student, I lost my father, was married, had a baby and lost my mother-in-law. While it would have been easy to quit college during any of those life-altering experiences, I chose to persevere. Persist!
Tenacity is also a great synonym for persistence and perseverance, which leads me to...grit! My colleagues and I have talked a lot about mindset and grit lately. Many of us have read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset as well as other resources on this idea. Grit plays a key role in overcoming adversity, and my examples above are testimony to that. But it is “encouraging that grit, tenacity, and perseverance are skills that can be developed with the right supports!” (https://www.pearsoned.com/grit-tenacity-and-perseverance-2/) Another resource I read addresses this same idea, honing in on the fact that teachers can do little things in the classroom to help students with noncognitive factors to help make a difference in students’ learning.
(https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf)
So in a round-about way, I was inspired to write this post to encourage teachers:
Run that marathon!
Plant those flowers!
Don't give up on kids!
Don't give up on YOU!
And don't give up on that tenacious, persistent, perseverent little flower!
Tenacity is also a great synonym for persistence and perseverance, which leads me to...grit! My colleagues and I have talked a lot about mindset and grit lately. Many of us have read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset as well as other resources on this idea. Grit plays a key role in overcoming adversity, and my examples above are testimony to that. But it is “encouraging that grit, tenacity, and perseverance are skills that can be developed with the right supports!” (https://www.pearsoned.com/grit-tenacity-and-perseverance-2/) Another resource I read addresses this same idea, honing in on the fact that teachers can do little things in the classroom to help students with noncognitive factors to help make a difference in students’ learning.
(https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf)
So in a round-about way, I was inspired to write this post to encourage teachers:
Run that marathon!
Plant those flowers!
Don't give up on kids!
Don't give up on YOU!
And don't give up on that tenacious, persistent, perseverent little flower!
Note: As I write this post, 2+ weeks after I took this photo (11.4.17), it still looks this bright and cheerful!