According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 68.8 per cent of mental health problems have their onset in childhood and adolescence. Helping children develop strategies for personal resilience has become a vital part of parenting and education, but it can be challenging to know where to begin.

Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania, and bestselling author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance says grit has four main components: interest, practice, purpose and hope. The combination of these traits help individuals develop grit, which is a particularly strong, scrappy form of resilience.

According to Duckworth, grit is a major determinant to success. More importantly, she believes that grit can be developed over time; it’s something we can learn. However, in order to develop grit, we must first have the chance to see it in action.

This is where books come into play. Picture books and children’s novels offer multiple ways to enter these tricky conversations about resilience and wellness.

We are educators and literacy researchers with a shared love of literature and exploring the role of books in children’s learning. Jen has master’s degrees in library science and children’s literature, and Clarissa has a master’s in education that examined reading experiences of anxious adolescents.

We examined how the children’s books in a large cross-Canada reading program might help parents and educators spark necessary dialogue about resilience in classrooms and communities.

Forest of reading

In the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading program, librarians curate book lists for different age groups of readers from kindergarten right up to adults.

Readers register to read the books in their level. Across the country over 270,000 readers participate annually in libraries and schools. Participants, including whole classes, can vote for a favourite book among the reading list for their level, and these reader-voted awards are presented at The Festival of Trees, a three-day book celebration held in Toronto each spring.

We analyzed books nominated betweeen 2013 and 2018 in the Blue Spruce category, for ages kindergarten to Grade 2, to gauge how the protagonists of these books show grittiness and resilience.

We wanted to see how these books might offer entry points for teachers, librarians and parents to talk to kids about overcoming adversity or developing resilience and wellness.

To guide our analysis, we used Duckworth’s grit scale for children, which contains self-assessment questions that align with the characteristics she identifies with grit.

Out of a possible grit score of five, 19 of the 28 books scored a four or higher. We rated the top “grittiest” books as: Shark Lady, written by Jess Keaton; Stop, Thief! by Heather Tekavaek and Butterfly Park by Elly MacKay.

And, we found four themes repeatedly appeared in the grittiest books from our analysis:

The Natural World

The Owl and the Lemming by Roselynn Akulukjuk, is about a lemming that outsmarts an owl trying to catch it for a meal.

This book portrays grit in two ways. First, the lemming persists despite initially failing to trick the owl. Second, the owl loses his meal but optimistically plans to improve his hunting. This book draws upon Inuit oral tradition and ecological relationships to provide readers with examples of grit.

This book was among 10 that we identified as highlighting the lead characters’ connections to the natural world.

Creativity

Ashley Spires’ The Most Magnificent Thing follows a girl as she attempts to create an idea she has for a contraption.

The girl becomes frustrated when her first attempts do not match her vision, but eventually, she observes the small successes in her past attempts, and finally makes “the most magnificent thing.”

This book emphasizes the importance of grit by highlighting how the creative process is a series of failures that we can learn from. It’s among nine books we identified with similar themes.

Gender identity and performance

In Sandra Bradley’s Henry Holton Takes the Ice, Henry demonstrates grit when he insists on using figure skates and doing ice dance even though it goes against his family’s hockey tradition and the gender roles associated with ice dancing.

Henry Holton takes the Ice has the potential to be a powerful example of grit for children regarding commonly gendered activities that may seem exclusionary.

This book was one of six we rated for grittiness that features protagonists who face situations in which they challenge heteronormative gender roles and identity.

Intergenerational relationships

In The Branch by Mireille Messier, the protagonist develops a relationship with her neighbour as they work together to make something from a branch that has snapped off her favourite tree.

Mr. Frank helps the protagonist develop her grit by encouraging her to find a solution for the broken branch problem and by helping her complete her project.

The Branch was one of seven titles we found in five years of Blue Spruce award nominees that focus on the importance of intergenerational relationships.

When adults encourage children to read about grit, and children can talk about their reading experiences, our society takes an important step towards normalizing conversations surrounding failure and growth.

Such discussions in turn play a part in helping students develop their own understanding and expression of resilience and hope.

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Jen McConnel is a PhD candidate in Literacy Education at Queen's University and Clarissa de Leon is a PhD student in Education at Queen's University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Where do we start?

Our question echoes our larger work supporting and educating teacher candidates, and our personal commitments seeking to act as witnesses to the need for reconciliation in Canada.

As researchers, teachers and administrators — one of whom is of Anishinaabe, German, and French heritage and one of whom is a longstanding non-Indigenous ally of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry — we have dedicated our careers to education for and about Indigenous people, and to Indigenous-led ally-building in education.

So, we start by acknowledging the situation. We are acutely aware of the historic and ongoing legacy of colonialism and racism that pervades Canadian society, and the specific role that education had in creating and perpetuating this legacy. Indeed, in Canada the education system has been a tool for genocide through the residential school system.

At the same time, we acknowledge that we have tremendous hope. We see self-determination and resilience in Indigenous communities, and increasing willingness, unimaginable a generation ago, in the general Canadian population to acknowledge history and move forward in a better way. And we acknowledge that we are teaching and learning in an era where, after the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, we know more about colonial legacies. We have more guidance on what to do moving forward than ever before.

Teacher education offers a path forward

In our personal actions, we start where we are. For us, this means working together and with the teachers and teachers-to-be whom we encounter in our work at our Faculty of Education at Queen’s University. The Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at Queen’s University that we both work with qualifies graduates for Ontario College of Teachers certification and provides a focus on Indigenous education in their teacher preparation. This program has over 400 primarily Indigenous graduates. We stand in awe of the change they have made at all levels of education; we are excited to follow where this change leads next. We deeply believe in decolonized, self-determined, authentically Indigenized education.

At the same time, it is unfair to expect already marginalized people to shoulder the full burden of educating the mainstream population and creating social change, as is often the case. We believe it is a vital part of our jobs to facilitate the learning of settler teachers so they can see their roles and responsibilities in the reconciliatory process. As Senator Murray Sinclair, Chair of the TRC, told the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples:

“I’ll tell you what gets me through it now and got me through it then, and that is the belief that you don’t have to believe that reconciliation will happen; you have to believe that reconciliation must happen … and you have to do what you can to make it happen.”

Our teacher candidates come from a variety of backgrounds. In addition to the teacher candidates who come from diverse Indigenous nations and heritages, we work with teacher candidates who are racialized, some of whom also carry post-colonial histories both internal to and external to North America. However, the majority of teacher candidates in our faculty are settler people of diverse European heritages. Given their diverse backgrounds, our teacher candidates engage with Canada’s legacy of colonization in different ways. We also spend time working with qualified teachers to respond to inquiries about how to address truth and reconciliation in their teaching practice.

Overcome guilt, find courage

For many teachers and teacher candidates, especially those who are non-Indigenous, the biggest obstacle we now see is fear — these educators want to do the right thing but they are afraid of making the problem worse, of being guilty of cultural appropriation, of offending or misinforming.

Many teachers have come from educational backgrounds that offered little in the way of Indigenous education content, and have not been challenged to think about power and privilege, or how various kinds of privilege intersect. They are now called to include Indigenous perspectives that they didn’t have the opportunity learn themselves, which presents an obvious challenge. As educators still learning (as we all are), we empathize with feelings of anxiety and inadequacy.

In addition to a lack of education, we are aware that another barrier can be caused by what University of Washington whiteness studies scholar Robin DiAngelo describes as “white fragility,” which includes “anger, withdrawal, emotional incapacitation, guilt, argumentation and cognitive dissonance, (all of which reinforce the pressure on facilitators to avoid directly addressing racism).”

These emotions can be paralyzing. We tell our settler students: You can cry. You can feel angry. You have a huge burden to carry. But do not stop at guilt. Guilt is unproductive. Even if the ongoing legacy of colonization is not your fault, it is your responsibility, and you do benefit from it. So to move forward in a spirit of right relations, it’s important to recognize what is going on and what you can do about it. That doesn’t mean taking over, or taking charge of the reconciliatory process, since meaningful reconciliation needs to be led by Indigenous people. It does mean listening, really listening, in the effort to find fitting paths forward. We know that inaction in itself is a choice and an action.

No reconciliation without truth

So, the first step in becoming an ally is witnessing. Being a good witness involves deep listening — full attention, openness, the ability to be present without judging and accurate recall. Sharing what is witnessed is about enacting the responsibility to promote right relations by widening the circle of learning and understanding.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) gifted us with 94 Calls to Action that have provided valuable guidance on how to proceed in supporting and furthering truth and reconciliation. The Calls to Action are practical, easy to understand and apply to all Canadians.

Inspired by the Calls to Action, an abundance of resources exist to help guide action. For example, The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation produces invaluable resources to help people grow as allies. The Assembly of First Nations and the Montreal Indigenous Community Network have also both created outstanding resources for aspiring allies.

We understand that for many Indigenous people, reconciliation is a meaningless term in a time when social inequity is still rampant and the legacy of residential schools and Indian day schools is still so visible. There cannot be reconciliation without truth. There can also be no reconciliation without Indigenous leadership, language and culture perpetuation, equal sharing of resources and meaningful consultation on issues such as resource extraction and relationships to land, air and water.

If we want to build something better for generations yet to come, each person must answer their own unique call to work for truth and reconciliation, which means noticing and responding to the particular circumstances and realities surrounding them.

The work has started. We have nowhere to go but forward.

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Lindsay Morcom is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education at Queen's University. Kate Freeman is the Manager of the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program of the Queen's Faculty of Education.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation is seeking new academic contributors. Researchers wishing to write articles should contact Melinda Knox, Associate Director, Research Profile and Initiatives, at knoxm@queensu.ca.