Resiliency

If you are feeling anything like I am feeling, I imagine that you are all trying to keep your head above water.  The last few weeks have been draining both emotionally and physically.  I know that we all hit the ground running as soon as we came back from our Hurricane days.  Like all of you, I was met with lots of deadlines, team planning, data digging, and deliberate practice selection activities that were due right away.  On top of these expectations, it seems as if there is always another thing to add to our platters.  The one thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that our students need us.  Our students were so excited to get back to the school they love and to their teachers and staff members who care for them. 

My goal setting meeting was scheduled two days after returning to school.  I did not have a moment to think about the deliberate practice indicator that I was going to select to accompany our school improvement goal.  As I was reading through the indicators, I came across indicator 10.1 Resiliency: The leader demonstrates resiliency in pursuit of student learning and faculty development by:

§  staying focused on the school vision,

§  reacting constructively to adversity and barriers to success, acknowledging and learning from errors,

§  constructively managing disagreement and dissent with leadership,

§  bringing together people and resources with the common belief that the organization can grow stronger when it applies knowledge, skills, and productive attitudes in the face of adversity.

I thought this indicator was perfect.  In this career, we are faced with many challenges daily.  It is so easy to get bogged down with all of the “Stuff”.  Things that may not be in our control.  I believe that the way one reacts to a difficult situation or obstacles that they face, is a reflection of that person.  In my first year as a building principal, I have had several experiences with adversity.  I know that through these difficult challenges, it is important to maintain a clear vision and provide students with a learning environment that will allow them to succeed. This indicator will allow me to show that I can overcome adversity and learn from the feedback I receive.  I will be resilient and help my students and faculty achieve greatness.  Resiliency builds a stronger organization. 

I came across an interesting blog the other day that related directly to indicator 10.1.  You can read the full blog at the following webpage. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-cultivate-student-resilience-marilyn-price-mitchell  

Here are a few highlights from the blog and ways that you can cultivate resiliency in your classroom. 

The ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well-being plays an essential role in how students learn to achieve academic and personal goals. Resilient young people feel a sense of control over their own destinies. They know that they can reach out to others for support when needed, and they readily take initiative to solve problems. Teachers facilitate resilience by helping children think about and consider various paths through adversity. They also help by being resources, encouraging student decision-making, and modeling resilient competencies.

Five Ways to Cultivate Resilience

1. Promote self-reflection through literary essays or small-group discussions.

Short written essays or small-group discussion exercises that focus on heroic literary characters are an excellent way, particularly for younger students, to reflect on resilience and the role it plays in life success. After children have read a book or heard a story that features a heroic character, encourage them to reflect by answering the following questions. (See the Heroic Imagination Project for additional resources and videos.)

• ·         Who was the hero in this story? Why?
• ·         What challenge or dilemma did the hero overcome?
• ·         What personal strengths did the hero possess? What choices did he or she have to make?
• ·         How did other people support the hero?
• ·         What did the hero learn?
• ·         How do we use the same personal strengths when we overcome obstacles in our own lives? Can you share some examples?

2. Encourage reflection through personal essays.

Written exercises that focus on sources of personal strength can help middle and high school students learn resilience-building strategies that work best for them. For example, by exploring answers to the following questions, students can become more aware of their strengths and what they look for in supportive relationships with others.

• ·         Write about a person who supported you during a particularly stressful or traumatic time. How did they help you overcome this challenge? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a friend that you supported as he or she went through a stressful event. What did you do that most helped your friend? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a time in your life when you had to cope with a difficult situation. What helped and hindered you as you overcame this challenge? What learning did you take away that will help you in the future?

3. Help children (and their parents) learn from student failures.

In her insightful article Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail, published in The Atlantic, middle school teacher Jessica Lahey touched on a topic near and dear to every teacher's heart: How do I teach students to learn and grow through failure and setbacks when their parents are so intent on making them a shining star? The truth is that learning from failure is paramount to becoming a resilient young person. Teachers help when they:

• ·         Create a classroom culture where failure, setbacks, and disappointment are an expected and honored part of learning.
• ·         Establish and reinforce an atmosphere where students are praised for their hard work, perseverance, and grit, not just for grades and easy successes.
• ·         Hold students accountable for producing their own work, efforts from which they feel ownership and internal reward.
• ·         Educate and assure parents that supporting kids through failure builds resilience -- one of the best developmental outcomes that they can give their children.

4. Bring discussions about human resilience into the classroom.

Opportunities abound to connect resilience with personal success, achievement, and positive social change. Expand discussions about political leaders, scientists, literary figures, innovators, and inventors beyond what they accomplished to the personal strengths they possessed and the hardships they endured and overcame to reach their goals. Help students learn to see themselves and their own strengths through these success stories.

5. Build supportive relationships with students.

Good student-teacher relationships are those where students feel seen, felt, and understood by teachers. This happens when teachers are attuned to students, when they notice children's needs for academic and emotional support. These kinds of relationships strengthen resilience. When adults reflect back on teachers who changed their lives, they remember and cherish the teachers who encouraged and supported them through difficult times.

Do you have a teacher who played this role in your own life? What do you remember about him or her?

MARILYN PRICE-MITCHELL PHD'S PROFILE

There are a lot of great articles and resources on this blog.  It is well worth the visit.  Have a wonderful first week of October.