America Succeeds defines Fortitude as the ability to persevere through challenges, maintain effort despite setbacks, and demonstrate resilience in pursuing long-term goals. This encompasses both the grit to continue when things get difficult and the strategic persistence to adapt approaches while maintaining commitment to outcomes.
Mason, a freshman at STEM School Chattanooga, faced a robotics challenge that kept failing. The robot foundation was either too big, too small, or simply didn’t work. Most students would have given up, switched to an easier project, or settled for partial credit. Mason took a different approach: “We went back through four times before getting it right because it was either too big, too small, or it didn’t work. But using critical thinking, we were allowed to figure out a way to make it work.”
“Four times” matters. Not two attempts before seeking easier options. Not giving up after three failures. Four systematic iterations, each informed by data from previous attempts, until success. This persistence through iteration—treating failure as information rather than defeat—builds fortitude applicable across life challenges. When Mason encounters obstacles in college, career, or personal life, he’ll draw on this experience: problems yield to persistent, strategic effort.
This is how fortitude develops—not through motivational speeches about grit but through authentic challenges requiring genuine persistence with support helping students develop unbreakable spirit.
STEM School Chattanooga: Fortitude Through Deliberate Iteration and Real Stakes
At STEM School Chattanooga in Tennessee, fortitude development is woven throughout their four-year progression through three tenets: Connect, Create, and Contribute. Their approach combines explicit frameworks, authentic challenges, and integrated support to transform persistence from personality trait to learnable skill.
Making Fortitude Visible: STEM School makes persistence explicit through their sophomore year focus on “Failure Redefined—Application not working is part of the process.” This isn’t just a slogan; it’s institutionalized through curriculum, culture, and celebration. Sophia, a senior, explains the transformation: “Mr. Carrasco was a person who pushed us towards failure so we could continue to become stronger in our project. There was so much failure redefined.”
The engineering design process provides a visible framework for persistence. Posted throughout the school, students see the cycle: Define, Research, Ideate, Prototype, Test, Iterate. The iteration phase makes clear that failure isn’t the end but data for the next attempt. Teachers explicitly teach this progression from freshman year onward, making persistence methodology rather than mystery.
Senior students Emma and Zoe demonstrate how this visibility enables strategic persistence. When community partners didn’t respond to their capstone project outreach: “We ended up not hearing back from some of our partners, so we would email them… cold calls, cold emails.” When traditional approaches failed, they didn’t give up; they pivoted strategically: “We decided to focus in on the parents in our school because they were more accessible to us.” This sophisticated persistence—finding alternative paths when initial routes close—shows how explicit frameworks enable adaptive fortitude.
Creating Authentic Experiences: The semester-long senior capstone creates marathon persistence demands. Students identify real community issues and develop solutions with genuine stakeholders waiting for results. This authentic pressure—where real organizations depend on deliverables—creates the opportunity to develop fortitude that simulations can’t replicate.
Sophia’s academic struggle reveals another fortitude dimension. Taking college physics and chemistry simultaneously, “It was hard not being the best. It was hard just not even doing well. It’s difficult to continue to be persistent… Sometimes it’s okay to pivot… but just accepting that some things are just genuinely hard.” This mature recognition—that some challenges require sustained effort without shortcuts—represents a deep understanding of persistence. She later shared: “I straight up failed Physics I. But instead of giving up, I recognized I needed different strategies and support.”
The four-year cohort model with consistent teachers builds fortitude through sustained relationships. Zoe noted about their math teacher: “She’s been our math teacher for almost four years, because she’s also grown with us.” This continuity means teachers know each student’s struggle history and can provide perspective: “Remember when you thought you’d never understand this concept? You persisted then, you can persist now.”
Rohan’s catapult project demonstrates fortitude through technical challenges: “We learned how to calculate how fast a projectile could launch and how we could make our catapult even better. We had to design it and then build it.” The project required mathematical precision, engineering iteration, and physical construction—each phase presenting obstacles requiring sustained effort and problem-solving persistence.
Integration Throughout Learning: STEM School integrates fortitude development across all classes through contract systems creating accountability. Rohan explained: “Our school emphasizes collaboration and critical thinking to come up with new ideas… we have contracts to keep people accountable.” These contracts—agreements students make about project commitments—create structures requiring follow-through despite challenges.
The school observes character during pressure points. One teacher noted: “You see character when deadlines approach, when teams face conflict, when projects fail. That’s when true character emerges.” This observation-based assessment recognizes that fortitude manifests through challenges rather than comfort, making struggle itself the context for evaluation.
Teacher Sheila observes Sophia’s continued mentorship after requirements ended: “They’re seniors. They don’t have to be helping me anymore. Their robotics is done, but they are helping me teach the freshmen key things.” This service beyond obligation shows fortitude becoming identity – persistence not driven by external requirements but intrinsic commitment to contribution.
The remediation week structure institutionalizes persistence as expectation. Rather than treating struggles as failures, the school builds time into the calendar for students to persist through difficult content, get additional support, and demonstrate growth. This systematic approach normalizes struggle and provides structures supporting continuation rather than abandonment.
Batesville High School: Fortitude Through Community Accountability and Professional Stakes
Batesville High School in Indiana develops fortitude through deep community integration and work-based learning where persistence affects real career opportunities. Their approach demonstrates how community connections, professional contexts, and progressive responsibility build resilience through authentic accountability.
Making Fortitude Visible: Batesville makes persistence expectations explicit through their Portrait of a Graduate framework, which includes “Resiliency” as one of seven core attributes. Brian, a freshman administrator, explains: “Being able to work through that. And every day is a new day. Every day is an opportunity to get better and to be vulnerable.” This framing—that resilience involves vulnerability and daily renewal—makes fortitude accessible rather than requiring superhuman strength.
The DISC assessment integration provides students with frameworks for understanding their persistence patterns. Judd explains that students learn how their personality type affects their approach to challenges and how to adapt strategies accordingly. This self-knowledge enables strategic persistence—understanding when to push through versus when to seek support, when their natural approach serves them versus when to try different strategies.
The employability skills curriculum, structured through weekly Monday sessions, makes professional persistence explicit. Jeff notes they use “Indiana employability skills as our launching point… for each of the Monday class sessions.” This regular focus on professional behaviors—including persistence through workplace challenges—gives students vocabulary and expectations for fortitude in career contexts.
Creating Authentic Experiences: The work-based learning program creates authentic fortitude demands. Morgan’s theater technology internship builds persistence through real-time pressure: “Sometimes equipment doesn’t work and you’re in short time, so you’re having to make that equipment work the best it can for you.” The show must go on. This reality creates persistence that can’t be simulated. Technical failures during live performances require immediate problem-solving and emotional regulation impossible to develop through classroom exercises.
Chris’s journey demonstrates fortitude through sustained professional development: “I feel like that really helped me find a way to be more confident in my interview skills, to where I can confidently go into an interview and not feel the need to be nervous or scared.” His transformation from nervousness to confidence required persistent practice over months of mock interviews, feedback sessions, and real employment applications. The stakes—actual job opportunities—motivated persistence through discomfort.
Ethan’s multifaceted responsibilities exemplify graduated fortitude development. As Dan, his educator mentor, explained: “He’s cadet teaching at the elementary school. He is the accompanist for their fifth and sixth grade choirs. He is a member of our elite Chorale. He runs the youth choir at his church. And then he also teaches piano.” Managing multiple professional commitments simultaneously requires organizational persistence, time management discipline, and follow-through when convenient to quit. Ethan learned “what battles to fight and which ones he just kind of lets slide, and he knows how to stay student focused”—strategic persistence requiring judgment about where to direct limited energy.
The FFA program connects fortitude to legacy for students from farming families. Abi’s journey from working on her father’s farm to building her own greenhouse business demonstrates this connection—persisting through the challenges of entrepreneurship while honoring agricultural traditions. When students like Abi document their growth through FFA proficiency applications, tracking skills gained and obstacles overcome across multiple years, they’re not just building business competence—they’re demonstrating the same persistence that sustained family farms across generations. This connection to heritage makes fortitude personal rather than abstract. Students persist not just for grades but to honor the resilience modeled by their families.
Integration Throughout Learning: The community integration creates natural fortitude reinforcement. Logan emphasized: “Our school isn’t just a school, it’s a community. Teachers live in Batesville. They eat, sleep and breathe Bulldog Pride.” This immersion means students encounter the same people for years—in stores, churches, community events—creating natural accountability. Quitting or giving up affects their reputations in contexts beyond school, motivating persistence through relationships that matter.
The work-based learning assessment system makes fortitude consequential for future opportunities. Lily explained: “Employers evaluate professionalism, reliability, work ethic. Students learn that character determines whether they get hired after graduation.” This real-world consequence—that persistence patterns affect employment—creates motivation beyond grades. Students understand that the fortitude they demonstrate in junior year internships influences whether they receive job offers as seniors.
Jeff’s approach to mistakes demonstrates how the school builds resilience through recovery: “We’re asking young adults to take on some responsibility here, and sometimes they’re going to make mistakes, screw it up, not be where they’re supposed to be. But how do you figure that out? How do you bounce back from that?” This framing—expecting mistakes and focusing on recovery—develops resilience alongside skills. Rather than treating setbacks as failures requiring punishment, the school positions them as learning opportunities requiring strategic response.
The Bulldog Ready initiative involving 70 community members demonstrates collective fortitude that students witness and internalize. Brayden described the significance: “This Bulldog Ready plan, the fact that we had 70 people in a room from our community to get something done, that just says what Batesville is like.” Seeing adults persist through complex planning, navigate disagreements, and maintain commitment to shared vision provides modeling that abstract lessons can’t replicate.
The Significance of Fortitude and Persistence as a Foundation Skill
Fortitude isn’t just another competency. It’s a powerful engine that enables all others. Students without persistence abandon challenging projects when initial approaches fail. Those lacking resilience crumble under the pressure of authentic stakes and real deadlines. Learners without strategic persistence waste effort on unproductive approaches rather than adapting when stuck. Without fortitude, students avoid the difficult work that develops deep expertise.
Fortitude development transforms entire life trajectories. Students who develop genuine persistence tackle challenges others avoid, knowing difficulty signals growth opportunities rather than inadequacy. They excel educationally by continuing through content that initially confuses them, developing depth others miss by quitting. They advance professionally by becoming the people others rely on when problems seem insurmountable—building reputations as individuals who deliver despite obstacles. In a world requiring constant adaptation and where complex problems demand sustained effort, students without fortitude quit at first difficulty, while those who master persistence become indispensable.
The Multiplier Effect: Why Three Practices Transform Fortitude
These schools reveal why fortitude flourishes when the three practices reinforce each other, and why traditional approaches treating them separately achieve limited results.
Making persistence explicit gives students frameworks and language for understanding resilience. STEM School’s “Failure Redefined” philosophy and Batesville’s resiliency focus provide vocabulary and criteria. Students can identify “strategic persistence,” “productive struggle,” or “adaptive problem-solving” in their own actions, consciously cultivating capabilities rather than hoping grit emerges naturally.
Creating authentic experiences generates necessity motivating genuine fortitude development. When STEM School students face real technical challenges or Batesville students manage actual workplace crises, persistence shifts from nice-to-have to essential for success. Simulated challenges with artificial stakes can’t create this depth. Real consequences—where projects affect community partners or technical failures happen during live performances—create the need for fortitude, where development becomes inevitable.
Integration throughout all learning provides constant reinforcement developing fortitude versatility across contexts. When persistence embeds everywhere—from STEM School’s contract systems to Batesville’s community accountability—students develop capacity to persevere in any situation. Occasional pep talks about “not giving up” can’t achieve this transformation.
Your Path Forward
These schools prove developing fortitude doesn’t require waiting for students to face crises. It requires creating conditions that systematically build resilience through supported challenge.
Getting Started:
Make Fortitude Visible:
- Name persistence, resilience, and adaptive problem-solving as explicit learning goals
- Create frameworks showing iteration as methodology (design thinking, scientific method)
- Celebrate “productive failure” by sharing stories where persistence led to breakthrough
Create Authentic Experiences:
- Design projects requiring multiple iterations before success is possible
- Partner with organizations creating real deadlines students must meet
- Build sustained commitments over weeks or months rather than quick assignments
Integrate Throughout Learning:
- Create contract systems where students commit to seeing projects through completion
- Provide “revision weeks” normalizing struggle and persistence through difficulty
- Assess effort and growth alongside outcomes in every class
Build From What You Have:
- Add “iteration documentation” to existing projects showing multiple attempts
- Transform one-shot presentations into multi-draft processes with feedback loops
- Require students to track obstacles encountered and strategies used to overcome them
- Create “failure portfolios” where students document setbacks and lessons learned
Enhance Your Strongest Practice: If you have strong project-based learning, extend timelines requiring marathon persistence. If you have work-based learning, help students reflect on persistence patterns in professional contexts. If you have maker spaces, celebrate prototypes that failed on the path to solutions that worked. Take what’s working and deepen the fortitude demands rather than adding separate resilience programs.
The transformation from fragility to fortitude isn’t achieved through motivation. It’s developed through authentic challenges with genuine stakes, sustained effort over time, and support through (not around) difficulty.
Next week: Character: How schools develop ethical awareness, integrity, and accountability through authentic experiences where decisions affect real people.
Looking for K-12 durable skills resources to engage your learners? Join the FREE PILOT today!
