Thank you to Strausser and his “A Teacher’s Perspective” Blog for this great post!
“Listening to Bill Bennett’s radio show, he had on an author from the Washington Post that I found really interesting. He wrote an article talking about a paper in the Psychological Science journal, which found that self-discipline is a better predictor or academic success than a student’s IQ.
It talks about the fact that if a student is not always fixated on immediate gratification and can actually see the “big picture” and a game plan in how to reach it but may not be the smartest knife in the drawer, they have a much better chance of doing better in school (and life) than the kids who have higher IQs.
This really mirrors a lot of what I try and do in my class because I have it set up so that literally the difference between an “A” and a “C” is the amount of effort that is put in and not just being smarter. I want my students to feel empowered to achieve what they put their minds to and not get in the mindset that things need to be simply given to them.”
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