Episode Summary

How a longtime educator built a course to strengthen student resilience and leadership. Kurt Wismer shares how GRiT started as a practical fix for an entrepreneurship class where students could run businesses but struggled with communication, collaboration, and leading themselves. He explains how executive coaching tools, paired with neuroscience and mental wellness metrics, became a curriculum that schools can track over time. The conversation also explores how smartphones, COVID-era isolation, and AI are reshaping learning, and why “human, then AI, then human” matters. What would it take for more schools to teach kids how to learn?

Key Takeaways

Durable human skills like communication, collaboration, and self-leadership can be taught with the same tools used for executives and CEOs.

GRiT grew from a classroom problem into a curriculum centered on relational intelligence, neuroscience, and mental wellness.

Resilience shows up as a repeatable mindset shift, where obstacles become “first attempts in learning” and progress compounds through practice.

A culture that allows redo and iteration builds the neural pathways for growth mindset more reliably than one-and-done grading.

Smartphones and the 2010–2012 shift, plus COVID-era disruptions, changed how many students handle struggle, independence, and social development.

AI can improve learning when it supports coaching and recall, but it can weaken development when it replaces thinking and productive struggle.

Employers can train tools and tasks, but they struggle to train people to be good humans, which is why these skills keep rising in workforce demand.

Timeline

Early
00:00:00 Kurt’s background in education, youth leadership, and what he teaches
00:01:00 The entrepreneurship class problem that led to GRiT
00:02:00 Using executive coaching tools with students, plus neuroscience and “how to learn”
00:03:00 How impact was tracked, including attendance, discipline, mindset, and longer-term results

Middle
00:05:00 Why the need is bigger than one school, and the national mental wellness context
00:06:00 What changed for kids around 2010–2012 and during COVID
00:08:00 The “human, then AI, then human” rule for classroom AI use
00:10:00 Concerns about AI removing entry-level learning and early-career development
00:11:00 Why analog and human storytelling still matter, even as tools change

Late
00:13:00 Workforce readiness gaps tied to human skills, not technical tasks
00:14:00 What “resilience” means in practice, including the role of “yet” and learning from failure
00:16:00 Progress versus perfection, and why “gold star” thinking misses differentiated growth
00:18:00 Why high-achieving students can be more paralyzed by failure than others
00:20:00 What GRiT covers and expansion goals, plus where to find the program
00:22:00 Closing and where listeners can connect

Links and Resources

Kurt Wismer on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-wismer-9a51a18/

Company on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/gritedu/