Education

Dr. Donalyn Heise

RESILIENCE

Dr. Donalyn Heise
Associate Professor, Art Education
University of Memphis

Do you teach students who:

  • give up efforts to succeed?
  • are defiant or rebellious?
  • exhibit calloused thinking?
  • are involved with alcohol or drugs?
  • engage in self abuse?
  • keep other people at bay?
  • are hostile or aggressive?
  • bully others?
  • are truant or tardy?
  • ridicule others?

What can teachers do?
Teachers can provide effective leadership, empowering students by giving them choices, engaging them in authentic learning experiences and collaborative community art-based initiatives focusing on real life issues.  By understanding the characteristics of resiliency, teachers who are advocates for at-risk youth can help students avoid the cycle of failure and low expectations that can lead to adverse outcomes.

 

RESILIENCY DEFINED:

  • "the ability to bounce back successfully despite exposure to severe risks" (Benard, 1993, p44).
  • the capacity to spring back, rebound, successfully adapt in the face of adversity, and develop social, academic, and vocational competence despite exposure to severe stress or simply to the stress that is inherent in today's world. (Rirkin & Hoopman 1991)
  • to jump back, recoil, leap. An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Webster Dictionary

Resiliency Theory is the belief in the ability of every person to overcome adversity if important protective factors are present in that person's life. (Krovetz, 1999)

Protective Factors that foster resiliency are (Krovetz, 1999, Pg 2):

  1. caring,
  2. high expectations and purposeful support, and
  3. ongoing opportunities for meaningful participation.

Resilient Children usually have four attributes in common (Senard, 1991, 1993, 1995, Krovetz, 1999)

  1. Social Competence =  ability to elicit positive responses from others, thus establishing positive relationships with both adults and peers
  2. Problem Solving = planning that facilitates seeing oneself in control and resourcefulness in seeking help from others
  3. Autonomy  = A sense of one's own identity and an ability to act independently and exert some control over one's environment
  4. Sense of purpose = Goals, educational aspirations, persistence, hopefulness, and a sense of a bright future

 

CHARACTERISTICS OF RESILIENT ART CLASSES: (Heise, 2009)

  • art making based on real life issues that are relevant and important to student
  • engages students in problem solving and provides students choices
  • in process teachers use inquiry method to stimulate critical and creative thinking in students
  • students actively engaged rather than listening to teacher
  • students obtain mastery over medium or process
  • students have fluency and flexibility - multiple solutions to an [art] problem
  • students develop/exhibit vision, sense of purpose
  • art assessment goes beyond product assessment and evaluation of principals and elements of design, but evaluates the students' depth of thinking
  • Students participate in service learning activities that engages students in learning about and contributing to the solution of real issues of concern to the student and the community.

 

Ideas for building resiliency compiled from:

  1. Pass It On! Ready-to-Use Handouts for Asset Builders, © 1999 Search Institute;
  2. Resiliency in Schools: Making It Happen for Students and Educators by Nan Henderson and Mike Milstein, © 1996 Corwin Press;
  3. Fostering Resiliency: Expecting All Students to Use Their Hearts and Minds Well by Martin L. Krovetz, © 1999 Corwin Press; and
  4. Spreading Resiliency: Making It Happen for Schools and Communities by Mike Milstein and Doris Annie Henry, © 2000 Corwin Press.

Provide caring and support

  • Create an environment that welcomes students, staff and visitors
    Experiment with longer instructional periods
  • Emphasize growth and motivation over compliance and minimally acceptable behavior
  • Emphasize cooperation and caring, celebrations and rites of passage
  • Encourage reaching out to get and give help when needed
  • When you talk to parents, tell them what you like about their kids
  • Leaders should make an effort to be a positive presence in the school
  • Use creative efforts to secure resources, and distribute them fairly and equitably
  • Create mentoring programs for staff as well as students
  • Hold information and orientation nights for new students and their families
  • Develop supportive partnerships with the community
  • Have flexible daily routine

Set and communicate high expectations

  • Encourage students to aspire to higher achievements
  • Have high (but realistic) expectations for academic achievement
  • Emphasize challenge and opportunity rather than control and discipline
  • Foster a "can do" attitude at the school
  • Encourage all organization members to develop growth plans
  • Establish regular review procedures
  • Provide opportunities for supportive and corrective feedback
  • Facilitate cooperative learning opportunities
  • Celebrate progress and achievements
  • Tell stories that emphasize effort and success
  • Provide professional development opportunities that focus on resiliency, both in teaching and personally

Provide opportunities for meaningful participation

  • Include students in site-based management and interview teams for personnel selection
  • Experiment with classroom-based decision-making
  • Shift reward system to emphasize cooperative rather than individual efforts
  • Change the perception of students as clients to one of partners; of teachers to one of coaches
  • Add a resiliency-building column to the school paper, written by students
  • Involve students in planning and holding information nights and other school events
  • Help people believe that what they're doing really matters
  • Challenge everyone to contribute to his or her fullest capacity
  • Be aware of how the overall organizational dynamic affects individuals' futures
  • Create the freedom to question assumptions
  • Treat each other with respect
  • Encourage experimentation and risk-taking

Increase prosocial bonding

  • Model preferred behaviors
  • Encourage a positive climate characterized by respect, trust, growth, cohesiveness, caring, support and challenge
  • Articulate a vision or mission
  • Promote shared values
  • Emphasize aspects of the school's history that support the vision or mission
  • Develop rituals and ceremonies that celebrate desired behaviors

Set clear and consistent boundaries

  • Define boundaries that promote cooperation, support and a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself.
  • Initiate schoolwide efforts to explore and clarify visions, missions and goals
  • Select staff based upon agreement with mission and goals
  • Provide clearly stated, regularly communicated and widely supported expectations for academic and social behavior
  • Include resiliency-building in the school's mission and goals

Teach life skills

  • Make effective efforts to improve the school
  • Support risk-taking leading to individual and group skill development
  • Monitor the environment and respond to challenges positively and creatively
  • Offer opportunities for critical thinking and effective problem-solving
  • Encourage cooperative behaviors
  • Share resiliency-building ideas with parents

Etc.

  • When discussing specific students with other staff, focus as much on strengths as on challenges
  • Add a list of personal resiliency builders to student assessment forms
  • Use resiliency as part of performance planning and evaluation
  • Print resiliency-building tips on parent letters and teacher announcements
  • Take pictures at student events; make double copies and give them to students
  • Recruit community groups and individuals to volunteer time and develop supportive relationships with students
  • Share with the media the good things students and staff are doing
  • Make liberal use of humor
  • Pay attention to and nurture your own resiliency

Bibliography: Resiliency

Appelstein, C.D. (1998). No such thing as a bad kid: Understanding and responding to the challenging behavior of troubled children and youth. The Gifford School, Weston, MA.

Benard, B. (1991). Fostering resiliency in kids: Protective factors in the family, school, and community. Portland, OR: Western Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, Northwest Educational Laboratory.

Benard, B. (1993). Turning the corner from risk to resiliency. Portland OR: Western Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, Northwest Educational Laboratory.

Bosworth, K. & Walz, G.R. (2005). Promoting Student Resiliency. American Counseling Association Foundation: VA.

Brendtro, L.K. & Larson, S.J. (2006). The resilience revolution: Discovering strengths in challenging kids. Bloomington IN: Solution Tree (formerly National Education Service).

Brendtro, L.K. (2005). No Disposable Kids. Bloomington IN: Solution Tree (formerly National Education Service).

Community Health Research Group (CHRG). (1995). Comparison of young high school leavers and stayers in Tennessee: A population subgroup analysis from the Tennessee Alcohol and Other Drug Needs Assessment Survey of 1993. Knoxville, TN: CHRG at the University of Tennessee, 600 Henley St., Suite 309, Knoxville, TN 37996-4133.

Cooper, N. (2003). Resiliency development of incarcerated youth through outcome based recreation experiences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Clemson University.

DeRidder, L.M., &  Dietz S.C. (1988). The importance of identifying and retaining potential dropouts in Tennessee. Tennessee Education, 18(1), 22-25.

Gentry A. & Jones B. ( 1972). Urban Education: The hope factor. W.B. Saunders Co: Philadelphia.

Hawkins, J.D., Catalano, R.F., & Miller, J.Y. (1992). Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 64-105.

Henderson, N. & Milstein M.M. (1996). Resiliency in schools: Making it happen for students and educators. Corwin Press, Inc. A Sage Publications Company. Thousand Oaks, California.

Kronick, R.F. (Ed) 1997). At-Risk Youth: Theory, Practice, Reform. Garland Publishing, Inc. NY.

Krovetz, M.L. (1999). Fostering resiliency: Expecting all students to use their minds and hearts well. Corwin Press, Inc. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

National Academy of Sciences (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Executive report.

Quint, S. (1994). Schooling Homeless Children: A working model for America's Public Schools. Teachers College Press: New York.

Richardson, RG.E., Neiger, B.L., Jensen, S. & Kumpfer, K.L. (, 1990). The resiliency model. Health Education, 21(6), 33-39.

Rirkin M., & Hoopman, M. (1991). Moving beyond risk to resiliency. Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Public Schools.

Werner, E.E. & Smith, R. S., (1992). Overcoming the odds: High risk children from birth to adulthood. New York: Cornell University Press.

Werner, E. (1995). Resilience and Development. American Psychological Society 4: 81-85.

Wolin, S.J. & Wolin S. (1993). The Resilient Self: How survivors of troubled families rise above adversity. New York: Villard.