Educators can help build students’ resilience by forging strong relationships with them, and building an open and caring culture, researchers say. That also includes normalizing failure during the learning process, putting trauma in context, encouraging civic engagement, and giving students chances to express themselves.
Being resilient doesn’t mean “snapping back to your former state” after a challenging experience, said Rick Weissbourd, senior lecturer of education and faculty director of the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
“It’s about growth and preparation for the next phase,” he said. “High on the list is being anchored to adults you care about and respect. Kids who have good relationships with adults tend to withstand hardship. Kids who have purpose tend to withstand hardship.”
Rebecca Rolland, adjunct lecturer at Harvard GSE, agrees that resilience doesn’t mean that you just keep going, and that it’s built from how well adults listen to children build protective relationships where it’s OK to try something and fail.
“A lot of times, kids who are struggling feel like, ‘I’m bad at something. I can’t do this,’ ” she said. “It’s important to give the message that, ‘You have value, you have expertise.’ … It’s about trying to find ways to let them be the expert and reinforce that sense of self.”
Weissbourd said he has noted an “allergy to adversity” in many communities in which parents try to solve children’s problems for them, which takes away opportunities to build resilience.
“A kid should learn how to fail and how to cope with it,” he said. And those who have been through trauma need assistance to “make sense of a trauma in some way, feel like they have some control over it.”
Helping students identify and manage “big feelings” is also part of building resilience, as they sometimes aren’t sure how to express themselves when they feel upset or defeated, Rolland said.
“What are you feeling: Disappointed? Anxious? A combination? It’s helpful in figuring out what they can do as a next step, teaching coping strategies. What can each of us do when we feel angry or feel disappointed?” she asked. “It’s not your personal failing. It’s a shared human experience.”
Schools need to build cultures in which they ask teachers to name students with whom they have caring relationships, and then assign adults to those no one mentions, Weissbourd said.
“It works around alleviating mental health challenges and increasing a sense of belonging,” he said. “Intentionality around relationships is a really important thing, creating a culture of care where the teacher knows the name and something in particular about every kid in the class.”
Being passive in the face of personal or societal challenges can corrode and diminish people, and it’s important for students to take action in the face of adversity, Weissbourd said.
“If you’re worried about environmental degradation, get involved in some way in climate change,” he said. “If you’re worried about neighborhood violence, get involved in protecting your community.”
Students might have their own ideas about how they want to confront challenges and failures, and it’s important to give them space to do so, Rolland said. If they don’t want to talk, “It can start with saying, ‘Let’s draw what you think didn’t work,’ or, ‘You can write me a private note.’”
“The other thing is to say, ‘What is it that this issue teaches us?’ Rather than blaming a child, or letting a child blame themselves,” she said.
If a student in an 8th grade science class misses a step in an experiment and doesn’t get the expected chemical reaction, the teacher can ask the class what might have gone wrong — and also mention what went right — without necessarily naming the student, Rolland said.
“What can we learn from the result? What was missing here?” she said. “We’re actually incorporating this quote-unquote ‘failure’ into the curriculum in a positive way.”
That makes the incident feel less like a failure and more like a learning experience, Rolland said.
“It’s flipping the script,” she said. “If you feel bad and go into your feelings, that leads to rumination. Instead, [the message is] ‘This is typical. This happens to all of us.’”
