How to teach this in the classroom....
Questions to explore when thinking about a child's resilience and vulnerabilities
- Focus on strengths - identify what students are good at, recognize it, celebrate it, and build on it
- Promote connectedness - be supportive, promote healthy peer interactions and friendships, encourage students to participate in school events, create a sense of belonging
- Model emotional regulation - remain calm, make sure that asking for help is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness
- Challenge negative self-talk and help children develop positive and realistic explanations of what happens to them
- Model reflective strategies rather than simply reacting to behaviour and perceived attitudes
- Consistently provide opportunities for meaningful participation
- Have high expectations and communicate them
- Create clear and consistent boundaries
- Most importantly, provide care and support!!!
- Why are you worried?
- What sort of behaviour is causing the problem?
- Who is being affected, how, when and where?
- When did it start?
- What factors are present in the child’s background (eg divorce/illness)
- What are the present and past risk and protective factors?
- Which risk factors could be decreased?
- Which protective factors can be increased?
- What are the strengths in the child, family, community, school, and how can they be built on?
- What is the worst thing that could happen?
What is Risk?
Definition: Risk factors are defined as individual or environmental hazards that increase an individual's vulnerability to negative developmental behaviours, events, or outcomes.
“What began as a quest to understand the extraordinary has revealed the power of the ordinary. Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities” (Masten, 2001, p. 9)
Examples:
- born and raised in poverty
- experience pre- or perinatal complications
- family troubles (chronic discord, divorce, parents with mental health problems, physical/emotional/sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, death, illness)
- reared by parents with less than 8 grades of education
- lack of support/role models at home
- relationship problems among friends/sexual partners
- minority status
- poor diet
- low self esteem
- parental criminality
Many of these are beyond the control of the school, but how we recognize and deal with them are still important
What is Resilience?
Question: How many students who experience
high risk factors experience negative life outcomes?
Definition: “normal development under difficult circumstances” or “the human capacity to face, overcome and ultimately be strengthened by life’s adversities and challenges.” (Richard, 2003)
"More than any other institution except family, schools can provide the environment and the conditions that foster resiliency in today's youth and tomorrow's adults" (Henderson & Milstein, 2003)
"About 2/3 of high risk children experience one or more negative life outcomes... But that means that 1/3 beat the odds." (Richardson)
Bonnie Bernard
Scenario
“Our well-being is shaped not only by our circumstances but by the meaning we make of what happens to us.” (Risk and Resilience, 2015)
"...teachers and schools can 'tip the scale from risk to resilience.'" (Richardson)
Student A and Student B both fail a test. Student A says thinks, "Wow, I guess I should have worked harder. Now I know better for next time." Student B thinks, "Guess this just proves I am terrible at this subject."
Who is more resilient? Why?
References
Bonnie Benard: Major Contributions
- took various studies focused on the idea of risk and resiliency theory and summarized them in her book, “Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors in the Family, School, and Community”
- she breaks the theory down into three parts: Universal Capacity, Personal Strength, and A Perspective on Strength
- brought to light the fact that many researchers and practitioners commonly misunderstand resiliency, believing it is a quality that some people possess and others do not and thus the children may somehow be at fault for not succeeding
- advocates that the findings of resilience theory studies should never be used as means to justify social or political inaction because most kids will ‘make it’
- compares and concludes that although different researchers may use various other words, the manifestations of resilience (or personal strengths required for resilience) can be grouped into four categories: (1) social competence, (2) problem solving, (3) autonomy, and (4) sense of purpose
- identified three characteristics of types of communities which foster resilience
- Benard, B. (August,1991). Fostering resiliency in kids: Protective factors in the family, school, and community. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
- Garmezy, N. (1971). Vulnerability research and the issue of primary prevention. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 141, pp. 101-116.
- Garmezy, N. (1991). Resiliency and vulnerability to adverse developmental outcomes associated with poverty. American Behavioural Scientist. 34, pp. 416-430.
- Lerner, Richard M., M. Ann. Easterbrooks, Jayanthi Mistry, and Irving B. Weiner. Handbook of Psychology Developmental Psychology. Hoboken: John Wiley & Amp, 2003. Web.
- Richardson, W.J., Richardson C.A. & McCabe, M. (2004). The resilience of the human condition and the educational experience. The CAP Journal. Vol. 12, No. 3.
- Richardson, Warnie. At-Rish Youth: Influences of life Trajectory. PowerPoint.
- Werner, E. (1989). High risk children in young adulthood: A longitudinal study from birth to 32 years. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 59, pp. 72-81.
- Werner, E. & Smith, R. (1992). Overcoming the odds: High-risk children from birth to adulthood. New York: Cornell University Press.
- Werner, E. & Smith, R. (1989). Vulnerable but invincible: A Longitudinal study of resilient children and youth. New York: Adams, Bannister, & Cox.
- -- (2015). Risk and Resilience. Retrieved from http://www.youngminds.org.uk/training_services/young_minds_in_schools/wellbeing/risk_and_resilience.
Werner and Smith
"...noted that teachers and schools were among the factors most often cited in providing a protective barrier, particularly against the scourges of poverty and family dysfunctions." (Richardson)
Werner and Smith: Major Contributions
- best known in the field of child development for their leadership of a forty year Kauai Longitudinal study (examined development from birth to midlife)
- study based off of 698 multi-racial children born in 1955 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai
- explored the impact of a variety of biological and psychosocial risk factors, stressful life events, and protective factors
- documented the results of the study in five books
- children who defied the odds were noted to have had an opportunity to establish a close bond with a positive, stable role model (e.g. teacher)
Norman Garmezy
"...school serves as a protective shield to help children withstand the multiple vicissitudes that they can expect of a stressful world." (Garmezy, 1991)
Norman Garmezy: Major Contributions
- focused his research on the people who defied the odds rather than those who didn't
- "were we to study the forces that move such children to survival and to adaptation, the long range benefits to our society might be far more significant than our many efforts to construct models of primary prevention designed to curtail the incidence of vulnerability" (Garmezy, 1971)
- almost 50% of children that grow up in impoverished conditions do not repeat the patterns that led their role models into poverty - why this is, is the basis of resilience theory
Risk and Resilience Theory
Cody Bromley, Jess Easton, Heather Towns