The following was written by Jonathan Stancek, a high school math and physics teacher, and a DoD STEM Ambassador. DoD STEM Ambassadors work with the Defense STEM Education Consortium (DSEC) to advance STEM outreach for students who are underrepresented in STEM or military connected. Stancek was selected by the National Math + Science Initiative, a DSEC partner, as its DoD STEM ambassador for the 2022-2023 school year.

During the past 11 years I have taught classes in every subject represented in the STEM acronym. I have seen students hit their proverbial wall at different points and with different subjects. It is always interesting to observe how students respond when they hit their own wall. Perseverance is a trait that successful people have—and I, like every teacher, want my students to be successful long after they leave my classroom. Therefore, I must teach them more than the subject matter. I must also teach life skills—and I believe perseverance, also known as grit, is one of the most important.

One of the best ways I have found to do this organically is to introduce competition into my classroom. Some might disagree with this tactic, but whether we want to believe it or not our students are competing for the colleges of their choice, scholarship opportunities, and eventually jobs. I use competition in a variety of ways and formats to try to make it accessible to everyone. In some instances, students will be part of a team and compete against other teams. In other instances, they will be a team (sometimes of one) and in a way compete against themselves or the challenge at hand.

I even go as far as having students play board games during times where we have built social emotional learning into the day, because this brings competition into a low-stakes environment and, let’s face it, everyone wants to win when they play a game. Rewards are given, and though it might not be much, I still think it is important to reward the winner(s). Some rewards include bonus points on assignments, or skipping a lab write-up for those who were able to complete the objective on the first attempt.

I have found that as the year progresses, student buy-in also increases. At first most students are hesitant and only want to do the bare minimum to get credit, but as the year goes on and they have seen the rewards and competed in various ways, they end up attempting to do more. By the end of the school year, students will attempt the assignment or activity multiple times to see the ball land in the cup or hit the mark they calculated even though the “reward” is no longer theirs to gain. They want to see it through—and they begin to understand that the real reward is that they persevered through challenges.

Review-type games at the end of the year become very competitive, and when students get a wrong answer they go back and try to figure out how they got the question wrong that ended up costing them the victory. I would like to encourage others to be creative in developing competitions and use whatever you can find. I did not personally develop all of the games or competitions I have used in class, and that is okay. One recent example is an activity I learned during a summer workshop conducted by the National Math and Science Initiative. During a lab and assessment activity, we were tasked with figuring out where best to place a target to get a billiard ball to roll off the table and hit the bullseye—where the ball landed would determine the grade. (My group hit the target dead center, but I digress.)

This is exactly the type of lab activity that I love, so of course I had my physics students do this activity this year. Colleagues, conferences, and workshops are great resources to find these types of activities. I have discovered many on the internet and often tweak them by adding a competition angle. My advanced physics students took on this challenge even though they technically only got one attempt for their grade. All groups that did not hit the bullseye asked if they could attempt it again and again. Each time, they redid their measurements or accounted for something they didn’t pay attention to the first time around, such as measuring the horizontal distance from the edge of the table and not the base of the table. In some cases, students made four or five attempts even though they were only required to do one. They were not competing against the other groups for a high score—they were competing with themselves. I was proud to see the “grit” they displayed with their commitment to figuring it out.

In STEM, perseverance is key because each failure or mistake leads to the desired destination or understanding. Developing perseverance as a trait is vital for pursuing a life in STEM. Students learn through competition that giving up at the first difficulty or wrong answer makes it harder or impossible to figure out solutions for the many challenges that lie ahead in life.