In the Know

From the Leadership Team

Lucas Collins, Head of Junior School 

Promoting Perseverance

Throughout this term, we've been spotlighting one of our core School values - ‘Perseverance’ - across the ELC, Junior and Senior School. 

Kilvington's values, which comprise of Perseverance, Compassion, Respect and Curiosity, play an important role in defining how we aspire to be as individuals and as a school. To genuinely ‘live our values’, we also need to understand, and be able to enact the mindsets, behaviours and actions that are associated with each. 

Perseverance is defined as persistence in doing something, despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. 

Among our four values, perseverance is arguably the most challenging to put into action on a consistent basis. It calls for our learners to acknowledge and embrace the fact that learning a new skill or developing a new level of knowledge or understanding is often challenging, not always immediately rewarding, and invariably pushes us outside our comfort zone. 

Crucial to the consistent application of 'Perseverance' is each individual’s ability to define what success looks, sounds and feels like in their own context. This understanding needs to be coupled with a recognition that the effort, commitment, progress and challenges experienced are all crucial and valuable steps on the pathway towards achieving outcomes.

 

Through frequent learning conversations and check-ins, our educators support and guide our students to develop, assess and refine their personal learning goals, and map out the steps required to work towards these.

 

We currently live in a world where our young people are increasingly dependent on instant gratification to maintain effort, partly due to electronic gaming and the ‘like culture’, driven by their frequent and wide-ranging online social interactions. 

 

In this regard, the consistent application of 

'Perseverance' becomes all the more valuable for our students. It teaches the crucial lesson that the effort and grit they invest in achieving a goal can be just as beneficial and personally rewarding as the eventual outcome.

PARENT TIPS FOR FOSTERING CHILDREN'S PERSEVERANCE 

  1. Help your child find a passion – even if this is an appropriate online passion – everything in moderation! Don’t dismiss an online passion as not worthy or relevant because it doesn’t align with what you’d ideally like them to be passionate about.
  2. Take your children out of their comfort zone when opportunities arise.
  3. Allow children to become frustrated when they don’t experience immediate success – resist the urge to ‘bail them out’ immediately.
  4. Model a ‘not yet’ mindset – ie, I’m not able to do that yet.
  5. When things are tricky, brainstorm strategies for success together.
  6. Celebrate attempts that end in failure – failing is such a critical part of learning!
  7. Praise effort and attempts, as well as accomplishments.
  8. Show your child your ‘grit’ – in an age and developmental-stage appropriate way, talk to them about how you’re navigating a challenge and how you’re planning to move forwards.

At Kilvington, we view learning as a lifelong pursuit. Accordingly, with each success that our learners experience, we promote and nurture a culture that encourages them to explore and consider any new questions and opportunities that may arise.