Teaching "Grit" and Persistence Through Revision: Shewanda Riley

One of my best practices for teaching the writing process, specifically revision, in my English Composition 1 class is to create writing and reading assignments around the class theme of “Failing Forward.” I assign reading assignments from leadership expert’s John Maxwell’s book Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success and focus specifically on Maxwell’s theory that redefining success and failure is vital to developing perseverance, an important factor in increasing GRIT. Our semester writing assignments critically look at how the ways we deal with setbacks, failures and disappointments impact our lives and potentially our future success. In addition, our class explores writing and the creative process using Angela Duckworth's GRIT and the concept of deliberate practice. One assignment where students illustrate deliberate practice is the revision for the autobiographical narrative. In this paper, students write about an event from their past and explain the specific failure, set back or disappointment.

In addition, they reflect on how the experience had a positive impact on their lives and what they learned as a result of the experience. They show deliberate practice when they work on multiple drafts and multiple revisions for this paper. After submitting and receiving the grade for their essay, students attend brief one on one writing conferences in my office where we discuss paragraph by paragraph their paper. During this writing conference, I explain my editing marks as well as stress the importance of multiple drafts in the writing process. They then make the revisions to the essay and submit a revised version. Students who have taken this class have shared how this class theme has helped them in other classes, in their personal life and improve their grades.