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The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs

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by Thomas R. Hoerr

An ASCD Study Guide for The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs

This ASCD Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding and application of the information contained in The Formative Five, an ASCD book written by Thomas R. Hoerr and published in November 2016.

You can use the study guide before or after you have read the book, or as you finish each chapter. The study questions provided are not meant to cover all aspects of the book, but, rather, to address specific ideas that might warrant further reflection.

Most of the questions contained in this study guide are ones you can think about on your own, but you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a study group with others who have read (or are reading) The Formative Five.

Introduction

  1. How do you define "a successful school"? Would all of the stakeholders in a school—students, teachers, administrators, other staff, and parents—have the same definition?
  2. Does "Who you are is more important than what you know" resonate with you? What might happen if this appeared on a banner hanging over your school's front door?
  3. Are empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity, and grit the success skills that are needed in life?
  4. Would any of the Formative Five success skills have been more or less important 100 years ago? Do you anticipate any being more or less important in the future?
  5. Is there a success skill that is missing and should be added to this list?
  6. Which of the Formative Five success skills might be most difficult to teach?

Chapter 1. Thinking About Tomorrow

  1. If—when—technology makes it possible to see and speak with a hologram that "brings to life" any person from history, which three people from the past would you invite to dinner?
  2. Experts can make poor predictions or be blindsided by a development. What surprises you most about today's society and schools?
  3. Do you think that global warming and growing populations will make the earth more fragile, or are you optimistic that we will find a way to solve these challenges?
  4. What technology would be the hardest for you to give up in your personal life?
  5. As an educator, what technology are you most dependent upon?
  6. How might future technological advances change the way we educate?

Chapter 2. Empathy

I encourage you to take the survey at the beginning of this chapter. Consider it a tool to help you reflect on your attitudes and tendencies. Does it seem to capture you? Might your score have been significantly different when you were younger?

  1. Have you seen nonprofit fund-raising appeals that try to create a feeling of empathy, rather than sympathy, as part of their strategy? Does this feel effective to you?
  2. What surprised you in how the volunteers responded to the directions given by the "teacher" in Milgram's experiment on obedience? What do you think you would have done in this situation?
  3. Have you seen a situation in which having too much empathy becomes a problem?
  4. What stories or events in history cause us to feel empathy? Could these be used in teaching this skill?
  5. What would be an effective first step in helping your students to feel empathy?
  6. If empathy does not lead to action, is it truly empathy?

Chapter 3. Self-Control

I encourage you to take the survey at the beginning of this chapter. Consider it a tool to help you reflect on your attitudes and tendencies. Does it seem to capture you? Might your score have been significantly different when you were younger?

  1. As a child, in what area was it hardest for you to maintain self-control? Today, what is the most difficult area for you to have self-control?
  2. What would you have done when given the one marshmallow?
  3. Is it possible to be a good student without having self-control? How might too much self-control be a problem?
  4. What would be an effective first step in developing self-control in your students?
  5. How could your students use goal-setting as a tool to develop self-control?
  6. Does your school have behavioral expectations or disciplinary procedures that can be loosened a bit to help students develop self-control?

Chapter 4. Integrity

I encourage you to take the survey at the beginning of this chapter. Consider it a tool to help you reflect on your attitudes and tendencies. Does it seem to capture you? Might your score have been significantly different when you were younger?

  1. Do you agree with the distinction between honesty and integrity and that integrity goes beyond honesty?
  2. Do you think most people are equally honest in every situation, or does the degree of honesty that people have change depending on the temptation?
  3. Are there some issues in which it is easier to show integrity than others?
  4. Why could it be more difficult to teach integrity than honesty?
  5. How might the issues for showing integrity vary by the age of students?
  6. What would be an effective first step in developing integrity in your students?

Chapter 5. Embracing Diversity

I encourage you to take the survey at the beginning of this chapter. Consider it a tool to help you reflect on your attitudes and tendencies. Does it seem to capture you? Might your score have been significantly different when you were younger?

  1. Do you agree that diversity needs the verb "embracing" before it? Is this also the case for any of the other Formative Five success skills?
  2. Are there particular kinds of diversity that might be more difficult to embrace in your school?
  3. Have you seen—perhaps felt—the power of a stereotype threat?
  4. How could focusing a professional development session on the stereotype threat be used to plan schoolwide diversity strategies?
  5. What would be an effective first step in developing an appreciation for diversity in your students?
  6. What could be done to help students' parents appreciate the importance of focusing on diversity?

Chapter 6. Grit

I encourage you to take the survey at the beginning of this chapter. Consider it a tool to help you reflect on your attitudes and tendencies. Does it seem to capture you? Might your score have been significantly different when you were younger?

  1. What role has grit played in your life? In what areas is it easier and harder for you to have grit?
  2. Do the criticisms of fostering grit cause you to doubt its merit?
  3. Do you agree with the statement "if a student graduates from our school without failing at something, then we have failed that student" (p. 122)?
  4. How can you help students and their parents accept that it is necessary to experience adversity and pain in order to develop grit?
  5. What would be an effective first step in fostering grit in your students?
  6. How might strategies for fostering grit change due to the age of students?

Chapter 7. Culture Is the Key

  1. What is the most powerful element—what is most obvious—in your school's culture? How do external events affect your school's culture?
  2. What could one infer about your school's culture from faculty meetings?
  3. Among Coleman's characteristics of culture—mission, vision, practices, people, narrative, and place—which gets the strongest focus at your school? Which get the least attention?
  4. Which area of collegiality is strongest in your school? Which area is most amenable to improving?
  5. Do you agree with Brisk's model of student engagement (p. 144)? How could it be used as a tool for faculty discussion?
  6. How could you use surveys as tools to assess and improve school culture?

The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs was written by Thomas R. Hoerr. This 200-page, 6" x 9" book (Stock #116043; ISBN-13: 978-1-4166-2269-7) is available from ASCD for $19.95 (ASCD member) or $27.95 (nonmember). Copyright © 2017 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.