Never Give Up
("Perseverance" for 2nd Grade)

Purpose: By the end of this session, I want my students to realize their need to persevere during difficult times.   

Materials Needed: For film clip: Mission Impossible II  (You can either use the clip where he's climbing the mountain on the actual video, or go to www.youtube.com and search for Mission Impossible Tom Cruise Tribute. After the climbing scene there are some violent parts, so decide when to cut it off!)

For more materials, see also the "Intercom Insights, Quotes..." for this trait, as well as the related traits: Diligence, Work Ethic, Endurance, and Overcoming Failure.  

Introduction

Today we're talking about endurance. We'll tell an interesting story and see a video clip. But I hope it will be more than fun. I think it could change our lives. 

Definition: Let's first of all define perseverance. What do you think "perseverance" means? (Put their ideas on the board and draw from them to come up with something like: "Not giving up when the going gets tough.")

Reflection: What are some of the greatest difficulties you face? (Teacher: Consider sharing some of your hard times and setbacks, in order to get them to open up.)

Transition: All of us face hard times. It's how we deal with these hard times that separate the successful from losers. So let's talk about how to handle our hard times.

1. Learn From Life’s Hard Knocks.

First of all, sit back and listen to a people story. 

People Story #1: Any one who has seen the Star Wars movies or the Indiana Jones trilogy knows the incredible excitement that producer George Lucas can pack into a movie. But it’s doubtful that Lucas would have made anything at all out of his life, had he not gone through a very difficult time. You see, during his teen years, a lot of people considered him a loser who was going nowhere in life. He never applied himself in school and dreamed only about racing cars. 

But those dreams were dashed just a few days before his graduation. While driving home from the library, he prepared for a left turn by glancing in his rearview mirror. But as he started the turn, he heard the sound of another car, a blowing horn, and the impact of a speeding Chevy crunching into the driver side of his car. It should have killed him. His car turned four or five complete flips before it wrapped around a solid oak tree. The impact was so great that it actually moved the entire tree a couple of feet over, leaving a huge hole in its former position.

Miraculously, George survived. Get this: during the car's third flip, his regulation racing seat belt snapped, throwing him out of the open top and onto the ground, thus saving his life. He was close to death, but recovered slowly through two weeks in the hospital and months of physical therapy. (His car, however, didn’t survive. It ended up in the junkyard.)

After the accident, George was a changed person. He decided there must be some reason he survived, and set his mind to get his act together and make something out of his life. He left his racing dreams behind and decided to go to college. There, he developed an interest in literature and writing. And instead of driving race cars, he began filming them. Today, he’s glad for his decision to let his old life and his old dreams die, so that he could go a new direction. You see, without this tragic car accident, he might have never found his way into the film industry, and we would have never seen Star Wars. (Facts from Skywalking: The Life And Times Of George Lucas, by Dale Pollock, Harmony Books, 1983, pp. xiii-39. Written by Steve Miller, Copyright 2002)

Discussion:

1. How many of you have seen a Star Wars movie? Which was your favorite? How many of you have seen Indiana Jones?
2. What do you like about these movies?
3. How do you think these movies made George Lucas successful?
4. Would you like to be as successful as George Lucas?
5. What can we learn from George Lucas' life?

Summary: 

For many people, the car wreck would have been nothing more than a tragedy. But for Lucas, it was a wake up call. You see, many of us just see hard times as setbacks, whether they be family problems, failure in a sport or failure in a class. Sometimes it helps us to remember that successful people like George Lucas had these problems too. But the difference between the winners and losers in life is that the winners learn from their hard times. 

Someone once said that we can either become "bitter" or "better" (write them on the board) from our hard times. The only difference between these two words is the letter "i" (point to it). "I" have the choice as to whether my hard times make me bitter or better. 

Transition: But it's not enough to learn from life's hard knocks. Also, you've got to...

2. Bounce Back From Your Failures

Perhaps school work doesn’t come easy for you. Perhaps your home life is a mess and beneath your cool expression you’re wondering if you’ll ever make it in life. I want to end with one more illustration.

People Story: I can’t make it through the grocery store line these days without noticing Tom Cruise staring at me from a magazine cover. How many of you saw him play Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible or one of his many other movies? His accomplishments are pretty incredible. At 37 years of age (in year 2000), he has starred in blockbuster after blockbuster, is one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, has been recognized for his achievements in acting by a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination, and has the physical agility (and guts) to perform 95% of the stunts in Mission Impossible II, including dangling off that cliff at the beginning of the movie. It’s easy to look at Cruise and assume that he probably always had everything going for him. You think he must have been very successful in high school and very popular with the girls. Think again. His life is actually the story of a survivor who learned to turn his shortcomings into assets.

Do any of you struggle with family problems? Tom’s dad left the family when Tom was 12. Some of you know the terrible feelings he must have suffered through in middle school.

Does your family run out of money? Tom couldn’t afford some of the things other kids had because his dad refused to pay child support for his four children. He and his sisters had to work to make enough money for the family. 

Do you ever have a hard time with friendships? Every time he made friends in one place, he had to leave them and move to another place, changing schools almost every year. Lots of kids made fun of him. He was always the new geek; never the cool guy. 

Do any of you ever feel dumb? As if Tom didn’t have enough problems to deal with, he had a hard time learning. He was later found to have a learning disorder called Dyslexia, which makes it incredibly difficult to learn skills like reading. Not knowing what was wrong, he just thought he was dumb and would often come home crying. 

Do you often fail at sports? Since he wasn't good at school work, he decided to try sports. He played football but was too small to play well. He tried wrestling, but slipped on some papers  when running some stairs and hurt his leg. So much for sports. Unable to wrestle on the team, he tried out for a part in the high school play. He landed a starring role and fell in love with acting. A theater agent just happened to be in the audience the night of the performance and encouraged him to go into acting. Later he would become famous. 

I’d like for you to reflect for a moment on Tom’s life. It would have been so easy for him to grow bitter, conclude that life stinks and hate all the people around him. But instead, he learned from his shortcomings. He remembered his hard times growing up to express emotion when he acts. He learned to work harder than others by having to learn with a disability. He says that his school difficulties were a character course that made him a better person. As a result, he goes the extra mile for his producers and has the people skills that make people love to work with him.

(Sources: 1 – "Cruise Control" (excerpt from 'Cruise' in Cosmopolitan, by Frank Sanello; 12-01-1995; 2 – "Man With a Mission," Lisa Wilton, Calgary Sun, 05-21-2000; 3 - "Conversations With Cruise," Vanity Fair, June, 2000; Tom Cruise, by Phelan Powell, Chelsea House Publishers, 1999)

Action Points

Do you ever feel like Tom Cruise did in school? Don't all of us go through a lot of hard times? Today, when you make a mistake or when life gets hard, remember how Tom Cruise felt when he was your age. Then remember that he had to persevere to finally be successful. And remember how George Lucas felt after his car wreck kept him from being able to race cars. And remember that whatever you're going through, hang in there! You can get through it!

(Copyright August, 2000, by Legacy Educational Resources ( www.character-education.info ). All rights reserved. Copies can be made within your own class (individual subscription) or school (school subscription) or system (school system subscription) free of charge. Not for resale.)