Ability, Effort, Other people and Luck

This was a very interesting chapter considering I spend most of my day trying to motivate students. Many of my students have not had much experience with success, at least not on the first few tries. They view themselves as stupid and don't want anyone to know that they don't learn in the same way as everyone else. It is much easier to be the class clown, or "lazy" student, rather than the "special education student." Most of my students believe that "smart" students do not apply effort in their academic studies. Most of my students believe that the "smart" students do very little work, it just comes "naturally" to those students.

An idea that really struck me in the readings was that people attribute success at any given task to 1 of 4 causes: ability, effort, other people and luck. Three out of four of those ideas actually hurt success. At some point in your life, you may not have the required skills to be "naturally" good at something, and other people and luck are not constants. Effort is the most useful trait out of the four. Effort can provide the motivation that can be applied throughout a person's lifetime.

One thing I have been trying at school is to privately catch my students when they are applying effort in their academic subjects all on their own. I try to whisper to them that I am proud of their effort. I have even called home to let the parent know the positive things that their son or daughter has done so that they don't always just hear the negative from the school district. At the end of last school year, I made a certificate for the most "improved student" and gave it privately to a female student who gave a 110% of herself to her academic studies. She said it was the first time that she was ever acknowledged for something positive in school. She was beaming with pride.

The Special Education teachers at the High School plan on explicitly teaching more lessons about effort and showing examples between effort and success. We hope the the students will learn to change their beliefs and start to put forth the effort required to be successful in their academic subjects and beyond.