Students must be given opportunities to complete challenging but completable tasks and be given every support needed in order to do so. One way to implement this kind of thinking in a classroom is to emphasize grit. Grit is perseverance and passion for long term goals even in the face of adversity or failure; the defining characteristic among gritty individuals is consistency and resiliency(Duckworth et al., 2007). To begin integrating grit into the educational curriculum the teacher needs to help the students identify concepts in which they show a high level of understanding as well as interest. The concepts they are interested in do not necessarily coincide with concepts they have understanding in, so it is important to set them on the right path. It is crucial for students to be set on this educational path so they do not get lost along the way and they can gain mastery knowledge, “so much of today's conversation is about the changing economy—how you're going to have all these different jobs and you have to be flexible. But you know, you also have to be good at something(Perkins-Gough, 2013)”.

In learned helplessness the important variable is not the occurrence of the aversive event, but the perception of the relationship between one's behavior and the occurrence of that event. We should teach children to (a) to take responsibility for failure and (b) to attribute their failure to insufficient effort, rather than ability. This would lead to increased persistence on the experimental task in the face of failure. Carol Dweck conducted a study on the effects of attributions students assign for their learning. In his study she gathered two groups of students, all exhibiting learned helplessness and gave them a pre-assessment of their baseline math knowledge. The students were then split into two groups to train on their math knowledge. In one, students were given Attribution Retraining throughout, having their answers corrected and making sure to attribute failures to effort, not ability. The other group was given a Success Only style of training where failure is completely ignored in students who are experiencing helplessness, in hopes to boost self worth. After retraining the two groups were attested once again and all but one member of the group who received Attribution Retraining improved their scores exponentially. Her findings lead Dweck to argue “that by changing the helpless child's attribution of failure in the training situation (from fixed to variable factors) one could thereby change his reaction to failure in the test situation (from surrender to persistence)”(Dweck 683).

When a student is experiencing learned helplessness they are performing exactly to the expectations laid out by their teacher for their academic achievement. If teachers want their student to perform better they must first believe they can and then make them accountable for and believe in their own growth. Implementing a growth mindset can be extremely helpful in giving students the confidence and ability for higher achievement. A growth mindset directly opposes a fixed mindset in which academic achievement is seen as decided and unchanging. Often teachers fall into the trap of praising their students intelligence or ability in hopes it will result in higher achievement and inturn assume their intelligence is the main predictor for achievement. This can be dangerous to students because it promotes this fixed mindset, devaluing aspects like effort( Dweck, 2006). To foster this growth mindset the teacher does not have to refrain from praising their students in instances of success, instead they must make the students earn it. Students should receive praise for things like effort and improvement, placing the emphasis on educational journey rather than the eventual destination. Praise in this setting will act as a reinforcement to behaviors and actions the students can control, motivating them to repeat them. Another way to foster this growth mindset in the classroom is to show the students deliberately and scientifically that their learning is in their control, and their intelligence is not fixed. Teaching students just a little about their brains can assist them heavily on their academic journey because it will help them abstain from assigning harmful attributions to future failures.

In the United States today, minority children, particularly from African American or Hispanic backgrounds, are performing poorly academically. A possible explanation for this harsh reality is the use of stereotypes by teachers and the educational system. Stereotypes in the educational setting coincide with general taxonomy (Casualty, Control, Stability), and are utilized as a twisted way of “helping” a student simplify an otherwise overwhelming environment. Stereotypes begin as a way to identify “what” someone is and then grow to explain “why” that person is that way and offer internal, uncontrollable, stable explanations for the result.(Reyna, 2000). Attributions such as these are so dangerous to growing minds as they cut the student out at the legs and provide them with no motivation to keep on learning. The first step in stymieing pervasive stereotypes is for the teacher to recognize their own participation in the perpetuation of these stereotypes as well the educational environment they have constructed. Going forward, the teacher has to make sure to attribute future failures as unstable, meaning telling the students their bad grade on the test is because of something they can control, like their effort, rather than something they cannot, like their ability. Lastly, it is imperative the teacher remains aware of stereotypes surrounding certain groups and demographics, as to make sure not to reinforce them further. Students cannot survive on their educational journey when they are made blind passengers to it, without the tools or permission to learn for themselves.