The Perseverance and Grit Squad Our journey through the design thinking process.

The Feel Stage In order to encourage teamwork and empathy for each other we participated in several activities the first week of school. We had a snowball fight with paper and learned three new things about each person in our class. We had a scavenger hunt for information about our classmates. We untied ropes while holding hands without letting go of our hands. We made a human knot by holding each other’s hands and had to untie the knot without breaking the chain of hands. We began the design thinking process by designing our classroom! All of these activities helped us come together as a class so we could work together to become change makers!

The Feel Stage Getting to know each other and using teamwork helped us to brainstorm problems we would like to solve. We came up with a big list! Better lunch food Longer recess Stop bullying Later school start time Recycling Adding more street lights in town More playground toys

The Feel Stage So how did we decide which problem to tackle? Our teacher read us an article by Dr. Everett Piper from Oklahoma Wesleyan University. We listened and talked about the article and decided that Dr Everett was talking about a lack of perseverance and grit in young adults. WE WERE REALLY CONCERNED! If college students cannot handle challenges, what will happen to our communities in the future. SCARY! We decided this was our problem and we needed to research further!

The Feel Stage In order to engage our community we came up with a list of people we needed to get information from. We developed surveys and interviews to help us understand our problem. We spoke with the mayor of Sandpoint, business owners, school administrators, and police officers. We sent surveys to teachers, parents, and students. Everyone agreed that we need perseverance and grit in order to deal with challenges in both our personal and professional lives. We found that adults see people using perseverance and grit and they themselves use perseverance grit daily. We also found that kids think they use perseverance and grit, but their teachers and parents do not see this happening. We found our problem!

Our Problem Statement In our school, children believe they have and demonstrate perseverance and grit. In reality they do not and need to have these qualities to be a productive member of society.

Imagine We used our interviews and surveys to help us brainstorm solutions. We came up with quite a list!!

Imagine We used three criteria to help us decide which solution would be the best. 1.What is the impact of our solution? 2.Which solution could reach the largest audience? 3.Which solution can be duplicated and carried on by classes in the future?

Imagine And the winner is??? Creating a YouTube channel and presenting to classes! We felt that both of these best met the criteria to create a culture of perseverance and grit at our school!

Do! In order to accomplish both solutions we broke into two groups. One group worked on the classroom presentation and the other worked on the YouTube channel.

Do! It was not always easy! Our presentation group first thought they would like to do a whole school assembly but……… They found out that it would be more effective and a better platform if they did individual presentations in classrooms. But that was just the beginning. We soon found out that the original presentation had parts that were not as good for younger students. We revised our presentation again to include a story and skit instead of the planned video. This took more practice, a script, and costumes! And then! When our first grade teacher and kindergarten teacher gave us suggestions we had to make a few more changes. Then we had to revise our presentation again for the 6 th grade classes. In the end we came together and hit it out of the ballpark!

DO! We also made a YouTube Channel called the Perseverance and Grit Squad. This also was not easy. We had to edit videos several times to make them perfect. We actually made videos and then did not use them because they were not meeting our goals. And of course there was technology issues!

Do! We persevered and now we have a YouTube channel we are frequently updating with new videos. Please check us out at dthORjQXxbStWdjqj0A

Impact We will not fully realize the impact of The Perseverance and Grit Squad for awhile. We are gaining new subscribers and our message is getting out. Teachers have used our channel to reinforce what was taught at our presentation so students are truly gaining an understanding of perseverance and grit! Please share our channel so we can have a global impact!!!

Impact Our presentations have had a great impact on students in our school. Students are now using the perseverance and grit vocabulary and can tell when they have had to use perseverance and grit in school.

Share We shared our design thinking project at an open house. Parents and some of the stakeholders we interviewed and surveyed came! Some of the stakeholders were unable to come so we shared our YouTube channel with them! They were so very impressed that we are truly change makers!!