Grit. When I asked my students what this word means, they said “cereal.” I think we can all agree it is not something we eat, but rather a fundamental life skill. There are many different definitions of the word, but all include perseverance and resilience.

My students face almost insurmountable obstacles in their home lives but still manage to come to school, do their homework and learn something. They show grit in their personal lives. But I see less of it in their academic work. All too often, when working on a difficult problem, they give up. Why is it that they can persevere in the worst life circumstances and yet, when it comes to a math problem, they can’t seem to forge ahead?

I have found that fostering grit takes grit. As a teacher, I help to foster grit in my students by listening to them and giving them a voice. Teachers also encourage grit in their students by explaining why we are assigning something and how it is relevant to them. To foster grit, we have to both earn respect and be respectful. We need to have high expectations for every student. And, we need to show our students that the reward for hard work comes from within themselves, not just from the grades they receive from us.

In my 11th-grade mathematics class, I assign projects that require students to explore life and mathematics through a different lens. These projects also give my students opportunities for making choices and for evaluating their own analytical skills. Granting choices to students also helps me differentiate my instruction without creating 108 different projects. Projects I have assigned include:

Evaluating statistics in The New York Times: The goal of this project is for students to learn to read information critically and to become more comfortable with newspapers. Students work in groups to determine the validity of statistics that journalists include in articles. I assign students different sections of the newspaper to focus on (a subtle way to differentiate instruction). Each group exchanges ideas and receives feedback online before writing a critique of an article they choose. They then comment on other students’ critiques, which exposes them to other sections of the newspaper. Finally, the students come together as a class to decide if any patterns emerge and if the newspaper exhibits bias.

Reading “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman and “The Housekeeper and the Professor” by Yoko Ogawa: This project allows my students to see literature from a new perspective. Both books are stories as opposed to mathematical texts. When students read “Einstein’s Dreams,” a series of vignettes about Einstein’s theories on time, they each choose one of the 32 theories to analyze and identify logical flaws. They also each create their own theories and write what could be a new chapter in the book. When reading “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” about a mathematics professor whose memory extends back only 80 minutes, students choose three quotations from the book and analyze both the mathematical and literary significance of each quote.

Participating in our annual mathematics conference: This project culminates in a mathematics conference at our school comprised of workshops run by our students. Every student writes a workshop proposal, which gives them an opportunity to choose any topic outside the realm of what we learn in the classroom. Topics have ranged from the mathematics of rainbows to the mathematics of soap bubbles.

In every project, students face the same requirements. But some will choose more challenging articles to critique, more complex chapters to analyze, more difficult quotes to dissect or more complicated mathematics to explore. I never give students extra credit for doing something “harder.” They do it because they want a challenge. I get the benefit of reading 108 different projects and evaluating not only my students’ knowledge of mathematical content, but their perception of themselves as well.

Through my teaching methods and project assignments, I have seen students develop grit. With a certain amount of freedom, they become more willing to work hard. They discover the value of what they learn and a desire to learn more. They also get the opportunity to find their hidden talents, whether it is in writing, presentations, art or computer graphics.

Differentiation is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching, particularly if we want to avoid stigmatizing students. I find the best way to approach this is to allow students to showcase their strengths. As a result, I get students who are excited to learn about the world around them, even when that requires challenging assignments.