作者:里克·托尼

Over the past ten years or so, the topic of "grit" has emerged as a key goal of many educators. 安琪拉达克沃斯, 性格实验室的创始人兼首席执行官, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive, wrote a book1 on the topic in which she describes grit as a combination of passion and perseverance. “表现出决心、韧性和坚韧...不要让暂时的挫折成为永久的借口...Use mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better—not reasons to quit."1 These are truly noble goals for teachers to set for their students. 根据定义，灌输弹性是困难的. 从这个角度看, 虽然, the challenges posed by the current pandemic can be viewed as an educational opportunity for both teachers and their students.

Solebury teachers eng年龄d in a full week of professional development in late March to prepare for this term of remote learning. 在适应了Zoom教学后, Canvas, 在索伯里传统的课堂安排之外, we realized the opportunities presented by this new environment. When else would students ever: produce a remote sketch comedy show, create a model of the digestive system solely with household items that were at hand at that time, 体验一下家长在课堂上插话的感受, 或者在“野外生活”中通过真正的建造来获得额外的学分, 照明, 维持火势? These are just some of the creative ways that our teachers and students have been exhibiting grit, 弹性, 创造力在这个不寻常的术语中. As so succinctly and powerfully articulated by rising 10th grader Ruby Burns, "None of you signed up to be online teachers yet you are all making it work. 老实说，我把它压碎了."

整个学期, we eng年龄d frequently with parents to support them as they participated in their own way in remote learning. Weekly meetings and email broadcasts kept us all focused on helping students navigate their academics while nurturing them emotionally. We heard testimonials from parents like Beverly and Italo Sessegolo P'19 '21, “因为我们的重点一直是让我们的孩子成为更好的人, people like you and places like Solebury are the source from which to tap on as examples for them, of everything that is possible when doing the best you can come from a steadfast and consistent effort. 谢谢你！, 汤姆, and to every single one of the teachers that 'see' and 'saw' my children and held them in the direction upward so that they understood their limitless reach. 毕竟说了又做了, 他们和我们所有人都会变得更强大, a little wiser and perhaps much more aware of what we hold in common as a species, 并为此负责."

在春天中期, over 95% of our teachers and more than 90% of our students surveyed reported that remote learning was working for them. We are aiming much higher as we approach the 2020-21 school year. 虽然我们不知道我们是否会举行现场课程, 远程课程, 或者介于两者之间, 有一点是清楚的. 今年春天，我们的老师和学生做了令人惊叹的工作. Personally, I am grateful for the incredible effort made by all of them. They completed a spring trimester under unprecedented circumstances and we all learned more about grit, as we re-channeled our passion for learning and fine tuned our perseverance.

1Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Duckworth, 2016, ISBN 978-1501111105, p年龄 254