Perseverance: A look inside the Greenwood School

The Greenwood School in Putney, Vermont is a small boarding school that serves students with complex language-based and neurological learning differences. Each year, students have the option to take up the challenge of reciting The Gettysburg Address for an audience of classmates, teachers, and parents. As the Head of School remarks, memorizing a speech with lengthy sentences and arcane language would be difficult for any student; for students with language-based and behavioral challenges, this requires additional perseverance. 

In this lesson, students view clips from The Address that follow the students as they navigate academic and interpersonal challenges in pursuit of memorizing Lincoln’s famous speech. Discussion questions offer students the opportunity to consider how to deal with frustration, how to support others in their frustrations, and what it means to take on a challenge. This lesson can be used to explore the theme of perseverance in an English class or as part of social-emotional skill-building in an advisory or counseling group.  

Essential Questions:

• What are the lasting effects of bullying?
• What are successful—and unsuccessful—ways of dealing with frustration?
• How can people support others in navigating their frustrations?
• What are some reasons that people take on a challenge, and what are the effects of succeeding?