Attributes Outweigh Skills

 

Attributes Outweigh Skills

 

             The first time I was forced to confront this concept was when I began teaching for Niagara University which was now almost 15 years ago.  One of my friends and colleagues at Niagara had been advocating for the use of this concept in conjunction with the assessment of teaching skills as a measure of future success in the classroom.  He argued, and it didn’t take me long to come to agree with his position, that the successful teacher needed to have the dispositions required to be a good teacher.  If you look at the graphic above, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand just what was being referred to.  

             When I became used to my position at Niagara and had become less of a novice in the program, I found it very easy to argue the case to my students that it was one thing to know how to write a good lesson plan and how to assess students using tests or rubrics, but the difference between a successful classroom teacher and the opposite was the attitude towards students and teaching that one brought to one’s assignment, regardless of the class to be taught.  We would talk about what it meant to be born to teach and they soon realized that what that really meant was having the affects, the dispositions towards the other, towards the student, towards the task that made it possible to reach out to a student and have that hand accepted willingly and happily.  

           Over the years, it seems to me, the argument to be made for affect coming before skills has only gotten stronger. When you think about why some students are thriving online today given the need to do all their learning online, those who are the most highly motivated to be successful   are those who are taking the steps necessary to figure out the process of being online.  The teachers who seem to be doing the best are those who like teaching to begin with and will do anything that makes it easier for them to reach their students and help them learn.  If you want to help your students, you will find a way.  The old adage that where there is a will, there is a way more than applies here.  

           In conjunction with this conversation though, it is crucial to talk about grit.  This was not something we talked about a generation ago, but it is certainly more than necessary to identify it in the students and teachers of today.  To explain why, let me point out that when our kids were small I used to say that I had a weed and an orchid for children.  My orchid needed a hot house, a very narrow spectrum of conditions in which she was able to thrive, but our weed did just fine wherever he was, whomever he was with and whatever he was asked to do.  Our orchid though had grit.  She didn’t come by it honestly or naturally, but she acquired it because of the challenges she had as a teenager. She learned how to pick herself up by her bootstraps and move forward.  

             This to me is the most important of all the dispositions, whether we are talking about teachers or students. Teachers need to have it so that, no matter what happens today, tomorrow, they will be back eager to succeed and do better than the day before. I students need to have it so that they cn learn from their mistakes and move on.   Today, more than ever, we need to know how important it is to regroup and try again. I used to tell my students about the little engine tha could.  For all of us, it is worth remembering that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.