Building Perseverance Through Role-Play

Instructions

• When students are faced with a boring or difficult task, ask them to think of a hard-working character whom they love, like a superhero or a protagonist from their favorite book series.
• Optional: Have students find or create props to help them get into character. For example, they could make superhero cuffs out of toilet paper tubes or old socks with the toes cut off. Students could also make a superhero insignia badge to wear on their chest.
• Have students do the boring or difficult task at hand, such as completing a classroom job or a challenging math problem, as if they were the character they chose.
  • Encourage them to talk to themselves as if they were that character. For example, instead of asking themselves, “Am I working hard?,” they can ask themselves, “Is Wonder Woman working hard?”
  • Reinforce and encourage students’ perseverance using the character of their choice by asking things like, “How hard is Dora the Explorer working?”

Closure

• Once students have completed the task, ask them to reflect:
  • How did doing that task as a superhero/character make you feel? Was the task easier? Did it go faster? Would you do it again?

Source

White, R. E., Prager, E. O., Schaefer, C., Kross, E., Duckworth, A. L., & Carlson, C. R. (2017). The “Batman effect”: Improving perseverance in young children. Child Development, 88(5), 1563-1571.

Evidence That It Works

In a study, children were asked to complete a boring task for 10 minutes, but they had the option to take breaks to play a fun video game. Children who were given directions to embody and speak to themselves as a favorite character, like Batman or Dora the Explorer, spent more time working on the task compared to other children.

Why Does It Matter?

Perseverance is key to becoming someone whom others can count on—someone who is reliable even when the tasks they have to do are boring or hard.

Teaching our students perseverance will not only impact how reliable they become in cleaning up their toys, but may also support their overall academic success. Research shows that students who are better able to resist temptations and practice self-discipline perform better in school.

In addition, role playing allows students to distance themselves from a situation by taking an outsider’s perspective. This self-distancing tactic allows them to stop focusing on their own negative emotions and their desire to do something more interesting. By removing these distractions, role playing can help students focus on the end goal of completing the task.