I'm finished with class, the students
are starting to work on their problems.

Billy again.

You know, Billy.

Billy says, "I don't know
how to do this problem."

It's today's problem.
There are examples on the board.

Billy doesn't know how to do the problem.

So I try to do the right thing.

I say, "OK, let's look at this.

Let's see how this problem is connected
to things you already know how to do.

It's just an extension
of things you already know."

So I'm trying to do this.

And finally, in exasperation, Billy says,
"Can you just tell me how to do it?

I'm never going to understand why."

If you've taught for any length of time,
you've had a Billy in your class.

In my experience,

the Billies of my classroom

have been saying things beyond

"I can't do this."

in three ways.

So the first thing that
Billy might be saying is this.

It's a belief about people
in general and a belief about himself.

The belief is this.

Some people can.

I cannot.

Notice Billy does not say, "This is impossible."

Billy says, "This is impossible for me."

I would suggest a character trait we might

develop in Billy is
the trait of tenacity.

Tenacity is the ability to keep working.

Even when it's hard,

even when it's not fun,
even when you're experiencing failure.

Tenacity is the ability to keep going
beyond the frustration.

Thomas Edison is an illustration
of a tenacious person.

His famous quote is that "Genius is

I will point out that everything truly
valuable in life is worth working for.

In fact, everything truly valuable
in life, you have to work for.

I think it was Thomas Paine who said

that "What we obtain too cheap,
we esteem too lightly."

Heaven knows how to put
a proper price on its goods."

When we worked hard for something,
the reward for that work is often,

is always, I would say,

deeper and longer lasting than the cheap
participation trophies that we often

give or get for less than stellar effort.

Tenacity is a habit of mind.

It's a habit of life that allows
us to keep going when it's hard.

Carol Dweck is a researcher who has made
the case that our brains are malleable.

She calls them plastic.

They can change in their function.

So we often think of our students and we

think of ourselves as having
a certain level of capacity.

And then what we need to do as teachers is

we need to get our students
up close to their capacity.

That's a very common approach.

And that's what Carol Dwett calls a fixed

mindset that the student
has a limited capacity.

Whatever that capacity is,

it may be higher, it may be lower,
but there is a set capacity.

Now let's just pause
for a moment to recognize.

We know that that capacity can be
lowered if students experience abuse.

The capacity to learn is
reduced if they experience

loss or some other kind of stress,
the capacity to learn is reduced.

Right?
So we all know that it can go down.

What Carol Dweck says is it can go up
as well, depending on your mindset.

So she calls this a "fixed mindset" where
you believe that every student has some

capacity individually
and that that's fixed.

Carol Dweck argues for what's
called a "growth mindset,"

in which not only are we trying to grow

our students in their achievement,
we're also trying to grow their capacity.

I find it helpful to think about
responding to Billy in this way.

When Billy says, "I cannot"
I say, "You cannot yet."

One of the things that Carol Dweck

highlights as a teacher feedback mechanism
that is correlated with a growth mindset

in students is that we praise
effort, not ability.

So if Billy has been going through school

being told, "You're good at things.
You have capacity." Then when Billy comes

up against something that's hard, guess
what he's going to believe about himself.

"Teacher doesn't actually know I'm a fake.
I've faked it

up till now. Teacher doesn't know
that I'm actually not that good.

I've been faking it."

So Billy starts to believe of himself
that he can't do it.

If instead of saying, "You're good at this,

Billy, you're good at math."
Instead you say, "Billy,

I really like how hard you're working
in math, and that's paying off for you."

Then when Billy comes up against something
hard, it's not an obstacle to be avoided.

It's an obstacle to be overcome.

The second thing that Billy may have is
what Fred Jones calls "learned helplessness"

or a teacher dependence
and unhealthy teacher dependence.

Certain students, if

you would let them,
they would have you beside their desk

the entire day looking over their
shoulder, watching everything they do.

Right?

That's something that they need to be.

Weaned off of children who have had a hard

time with school have had more messages
of failure than other students.

So here's what can happen.

Billy calls me over to his desk.

I look at his math work, and I say, "OK,
you did steps one, two, and three right,

but here's where you made a mistake."
Notice that little word "but"?

That undoes everything that I have
just said positive about what Billy did.

We're focusing on what Billy did wrong.

For some students,

that's invisible.

For Billy, that's not. Because, for Billy,
he has had these messages of failure,

these negative messages,
probably quite a lot.

So I need to be careful in my feedback

to a student who wants me by their
side every step of the way.

An approach that I've tried, and it works—

it's called "praise, prompt, and leave."

You focus on what the student did right.

"Look, you did the first three steps

correctly," and then you don't use
the word but or anything like that.

Instead, you say, "The next thing to do is,"

and only give them the next thing.

So here's the temptation.

There's eleven steps along the way.

They've done the first four.

We look at step five,

and we say, "OK,
here's the next thing to do.

And then I know I'm going to have
to come back and tell him step six.

So I may as well tell him right now.

And step seven, and eight, and nine,
and now he's in cognitive overload.

Praise, prompt, and leave says,
"No, just do the very next thing."

And if Billy has to call
you back over for step six,

praise, prompt, and leave again.

I'm going to do a quick aside here,

though, and point out, too,
that not all of our students

just need to work harder.

There are students who have learning
disabilities that actually do make

things much more challenging
for them than they are, even for us.

If you talk to somebody who, for example,
has dyslexia and whose teachers did not

understand them and who got spankings
for not working hard enough,

it'll kind of scare you.

It isn't always the case
that students need to work harder.

However,

even students with learning disabilities
can grow their abilities with tenacity.

I have stopped apologizing to my students
for asking them to do hard things.

I've stopped apologizing for hard work.

In fact,

in their senior year,
students get to decide what math course

they do, and I always try to get
at least some of them to take calculus.

And they ask, "Why should I take calculus?"

And I say, "Because it's hard.

Because you're going to work your
tail off and it's going to be great."

We do need to have meaningful practice

of this habit of tenacity in our
classrooms, and I don't know what

that looks like in every grade level.
But if we can have meaningful practice

of tenacious habits, our students will
grow beyond their current limitations.

There's a third possible

reason why the student says,
I can't do this, and that is the student

may be afraid that they
will fail at this task.

"I can't do this" may mean rather than "I

can't do this at all." "I can't do this
to the standard that I hold for myself."

Billy may be afraid of failure.

A fear of failure can debilitate
even the most gifted of students.

And for a student like that, it's not
actually tenacity that they need.

I've had students top of the class.

They study for 3 hours for a test.

They could ace the test without studying,
but they still study for 3 hours.

Why?
Because they don't want to fail.

I had a student one time who

got a 99% on a test
and came back to me after the test.

After I gave the test back,
she came back to me.

She said, "Mr.

Kuhns, you didn't add up
the extra credit, right?

I actually had 100%." And she was right.

I had missed an extra credit question,

and she did have 100%. Straight

And I told her later,
I said, "You know, I was disappointed.

I wanted you to get a 99%."
She said, "What?

Why?"

She said...

I told her, "Because I wanted you to see

that getting a 99% is not
the end of the world."

Most of us can only dream of that kind
of even like having that a possibility.

Right?
But

she thanked me for that years later.

She said, "You know,
that was a turning point for me because I

thought that my teachers wanted me to be
perfect, and I realized they didn't."

If we're holding for our students,

this standard of "You always
have to do your very best."

Guess what?

We don't live up
to that standard ourselves.

I would say here that a fear of failure

comes out of a misapplication of another
habit, another

virtue, intellectual virtue,
and that is the virtue of carefulness.

We believe in carefulness.

We believe in students doing
well, being careful in their work,

being neat and thorough and doing
all the steps, all these things.

That's good.

Carefulness is that consistent habit

of being patient and diligent
in the pursuit of truth.

It is not excessive fastidiousness.

So carefulness

misapplied takes us to perfectionism.

So the difference between
a perfectionist and a craftsman.

I actually put this quote on my desk as

a reminder to myself, because I
can be a bit of a perfectionist.

The difference between
a perfectionist and a craftsman.

Both the perfectionist and the craftsman

can see the flaws in their work, but
the perfectionist is debilitated by it.

The craftsman can keep going.

We want our students
to become craftspeople

in their work.

We don't want them
to become perfectionists.

Now our students do rise and shrink
according to our expectations for them.

But one of the things that I want to do

in my classroom is I want to create
an atmosphere in which it's okay to fail.

But it's not okay just to fail.

Here's what I mean.

Failure is a key to success

if and only if you're
learning from your mistakes.

Every time you fail, you need
to learn from that mistake.

But if I can create a culture

in my classroom where it's safe,
where students can fail.

The thing that makes me most angry at a

student is if they're mocking
another one for failing.

You do not do that in my classroom.

If the classroom isn't safe for somebody
to fail to ask the dumb question,

if they're not safe to do that,
they're going to be afraid.

And that fear.

Remember what I said about
our ability to learn?

Fear reduces that as well.

Second Corinthians 4:7.

He says, "We have this treasure in jars

of clay to show that the surpassing
power belongs to God and not to us."

It's an important aside
that I'm just going to let go.

"We are afflicted in every way,

but not crushed, perplexed but not driven
to despair, persecuted but not forsaken,

struck down but not destroyed,
always carrying in the body the death

of Jesus so that the life of Jesus
may also be manifested in our bodies.

For we who live are always being given
over to death for Jesus sake so

that the life of Jesus may also
be manifest in our mortal flesh.

So death is at work in us,
but life in you."

Hopping down to verse 16,
he says, "So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away,

our outer self is suffering, our inner
self is being renewed day by day.

For this light momentary affliction is

preparing us for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison as we look

not to the things that are seen,
but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are

transient, but the things
that are unseen are eternal."

Classrooms filled with tenacious teachers

and students are classrooms
where learning can flourish

if we see difficulty as an opportunity

to grow rather than as
a thing to be avoided.

Both student and teacher can lean
in when the going gets tough.

When that happens,
I propose we will produce adults who are

better equipped to serve
Christ in his Kingdom.