In The NoCo

Some students may have lost their ‘grit.’ Can teachers and parents help bring it back?

By In The NoCo,

Published January 3, 2025 at 5:35 AM MST

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Erica Breunlin, a woman with long light-brown hair, wearing a pink coat and a lacy collared blouse, smiles in this photograph. She is an education reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado. — "[Grit] is basically a person's level of determination to stick through challenges, to not give up... and to just really put their head down and work through a problem until they get to the other side," says Colorado Sun education reporter Erica Breunlin. She recently wrote about efforts by Colorado educators and parents to help students cultivate greater resilience.

Colorado teachers say their students are missing something that helps determine their academic success. Call it grit.

If a student who struggles with math studies hard and performs well on their math test, that’s grit. If they complete a homework assignment that was tough to finish, that's also grit.

Erica Breunlin covers education for The Colorado Sun. Since the pandemic, she says teachers have told her they’re seeing less grit in the classroom. And that’s leading to lower test scores for K-12 students.

Breunlin recently wrote about grit, and the strategies some educators and parents have developed to build more of it in their kids. She joined host Erin O’Toole to share what she learned.

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In The NoCo

KUNC's In The NoCo is a daily slice of stories, news, people and issues. It's a window to the communities along the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The show brings context and insight to the stories of the day, often elevating unheard voices in the process. And because life in Northern Colorado is a balance of work and play, we celebrate the lighter side of things here, too.

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Ariel Lavery

Ariel Lavery grew up in Louisville, Colorado and has returned to the Front Range after spending over 25 years moving around the country. She co-created the podcast Middle of Everywhere for WKMS, Murray State University’s NPR member station, and won Public Media Journalism awards in every season she produced for Middle of Everywhere. Her most recent series project is "The Burn Scar", published with The Modern West podcast. In it, she chronicles two years of her family’s financial and emotional struggle following the loss of her childhood home in the Marshall Fire.

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Erin O'Toole

As the host of KUNC’s new program and podcast In the NoCo, I work closely with our producers and reporters to bring context and diverse perspectives to the important issues of the day. Northern Colorado is such a diverse and growing region, brimming with history, culture, music, education, civic engagement, and amazing outdoor recreation. I love finding the stories and voices that reflect what makes NoCo such an extraordinary place to live.

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Brad Turner

Brad Turner is an executive producer in KUNC's newsroom. He manages the podcast team that makes In The NoCo, which also airs weekdays in Morning Edition and All Things Considered. His work as a podcaster and journalist has appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition, NPR Music, the PBS Newshour, Colorado Public Radio, MTV Online, the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, and the Longmont Times-Call.

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