“ Do not judge me by my success , judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again .”
CHARACTER EDUCATION
What is resilience ?
Resilience has been proven to positively impact a person ’ s achievements , health and wellbeing – especially in the face of adversity .
Resilience noun
1 . The ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant , such as shock , injury …
2 . The ability of a substance to return to its original shape after it has been bent , stretched or pressed . ( OLD , 2023 ).
Resilience is the ability to avoid abandoning things when they get tough . It is also the ability to bounce back , to build from rejection and failure . We learn from change , yet most of us are not brought up to lean into it , to hold change in our arms and say , ‘ welcome old friend ’, what opportunity is this change about to give me ?
How can we help students become more resilient ?
Annabel Cordón Bates , Teacher of Drama and Trinity and LAMDA Speech and Drama
“ Do not judge me by my success , judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again .”
Nelson Mandela ( 1990 )
The teenager ’ s brain is a special kind of chemical conundrum . In order for teenagers to learn how to survive away from their caregivers the sudden increase of dopamine at this age encourages more risky behaviours ( Curran , 2018 ). But the combination of added jeopardy and increased dopamine ( without serotonin increasing at the same rate ), can leave our young people vulnerable . Childline has reported that they are dealing with more cases than ever before ( Summers , 2017 ).
Teaching resilience to young people is an effective tool for helping them cope with the challenges of teenage experience . Research shows that “ a higher level of resilience before COVID-19 significantly predicted decreased severity of depression and anxiety after the lockdown among Chinese adolescents ”. ( Shi , W . et al 2022 ).
Teaching a resilient mindset is not straightforward , not least because teenagers are of course all very different . Some are naturally more resilient in character than others , and some don ’ t get as rapid or immense a hit of dopamine when they reach adolescence , with all its transitions and pressures . Furthermore , some young people are much more susceptible to the balance of things tipping in the wrong direction because of various risk factors including genetics , personality and environment ( NSCPP , 2019 ).
One key element relates to the need for teenagers to be seen ( Curran 2018 ). If we seek genuine connection , as well as demonstrate by example , they are more able to learn helpful resilience habits and unlearn any that are unhelpful .
Sevenoaks is committed to cultivating resilience in different contexts . A great deal happens , for example , in the co-curriculum . We also look at building academic resilience , helping students learn tools that strengthen their understanding and capacity for retention . Furthermore , initiatives such as the Middle School Diploma are designed to encourage student reflection as well as recognition of a variety of values and competencies that promote resilience . But what can we do as individual practitioners that both recognises the ways in which resilience presents itself , as well as helps students to develop characteristics associated with it ?
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