There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHVery few people can keep going their whole life doing something and feel like it’s merely personally fascinating.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think it’s very important to send the message that, while parents are needed to remind you to practice and occasionally force you to finish things… they also need to learn to respect you. You as an individual, ultimately, are the captain of where you’re going.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMaybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThe parenting style that is good for grit is also the parenting style good for most other things: Be really, really demanding, and be very, very supportive.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHGrit may carry risk because it’s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHPeople’s lives really do turn out differently. And it certainly can’t be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThe most important thing parents can do, although it’s not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI’m not a policy oriented person. I’m constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMost people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it’s important, too – and important to other people.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThe focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?
ANGELA DUCKWORTHAs our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere are no shortcuts to true excellence.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHOne of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMost teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it’s part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH