Entry # 36:
Resiliency:
More Power and More Smarts


Resiliency is either "the capacity to spring back and adapt in the face of adversity" -- if you take your definition from Henderson and Milstein -- or it's "about bouncing back from problems and stuff with more power and more smarts," if you ask 15-year old student Sean.

I prefer Sean's take on this set of life skills that I've rarely heard discussed in either a teachers' lounge or staff meeting. I'm puzzled by this lack of focus. As a veteran of workshops, meetings and endless conversations about anything and everything related to students and their success or lack of it, I'm wondering why this pretty obvious source of their strength has been overlooked.

Has our entrenchment in a deficit model been so complete that we've lost sight of key strengths our students bring to school? Have we viewed the success of some students, their resilience, as something innate and therefore beyond our sphere of influence or understanding? Is this one more example of the double standard that gets used when the students are "other peoples' children"?

Our nation loves nothing more than the hard luck story of an individual who prevails in the face of a difficult childhood. Campaign spin doctors try to sell us images of their privileged candidates as regular Joes, who worked their way up from the bottom. Hollywood never tires of the theme either. So if we vote for this image and pay to see it in theaters, why don't we embrace it in our students?

The uncomfortable "me"

Time to switch from the royal "we" to the more uncomfortable, "me." Why have I looked at resilience as something some kids are born with while others are not? Why have I accepted it as something beyond my control? Why haven't I explored this area more?

As I read over the "Resiliency Training Packet" that a colleague just shared with me, I see pieces of interventions and glimpses of partial understandings that I've put into practice. I'm talking no-brainers like "encourage participation" and the creation of the atmosphere of an extended family, where kids matter as individuals.

Nan Henderson and Associates also point to a lot of other givens: the importance of avoiding labels like "high-risk", demonstrating flexibility, encouraging creativity and so on. The piece that's missing for me is the reason why I've failed to pull this all together in a meaningful whole.

Instead of trying to show how much I cared about my kids, I should have been showing them how strong and worthy of care they were. I'm not saying I didn't empower my kids at all, I'm saying that I'm afraid I created a little "cult of personality" where they did well with me in science or tech, but weren't necessarily transferring their abilities in other areas of our school or their lives.

I think we both viewed what went on in my classroom as special, rather than seeing it as a reflection of their basic right to a safe place to take risks and learn. More importantly, I think they associated their achievement more with me than with their own hard work and ability. Maybe that's why a lot of visitors to my classroom left without a clear view of the way to transfer "my" model back to their schools.

Taking my lessons back to the classroom

I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to do things differently if I return to the classroom in September. I've learned a lot this year that's challenged my thinking and my view of the way(s) I organized my room and my instruction. This issue of student resilience is right up there on my list for reflection and refinement, along with the question of classroom management, and extrinsic rewards and their underpinnings.

I don't want to be "nice," I want to be equitable. I want to empower kids, but I can't do that with a lopsided or partial view of their capabilities. My efforts up until now haven't really broken with the "uplift" model that I resented as a kid.

School shouldn't be about changing kids into something new. School should be about helping them become "their" best, not mine. It shouldn't be about their having this or that teacher who gives them some space to grow. School should be about all of us respecting their strengths and needs.

I've been using the article by Emily Style, "Curriculum as Window and Mirror," all year in staff development. I've done a pretty good job of underscoring the need for our students to see themselves reflected in our classroom materials, but I haven't transcended the extent to which this can be simply misused as a hook.

If we throw in some diversity -- if we attach women and authors of color, but we don't really appreciate why their perspective is different or how it enriches our program -- have we just added token pieces of curriculum to make our surface instruction more palatable, to hook our kids into our way of doing things?

If my students don't actively explore the similarities of these authors' experiences with their own lives, if we don't make the connections, what's the purpose of their inclusion? Do they become examples of the exceptions, the survivors who "made it" into the mainstream, or do they become living, breathing models of the possibility of change?

Artificial mentors and "assigned" friends

I'm afraid I've shortchanged my kids by only going as far as the "exceptional" approach. I've misunderstood resiliency myself, so I haven't been exploring its value with my kids or my colleagues.

In the past, I've been involved with plans for every student to have a colleague mentor. In our plans we've divided up those kids we've seen as most at risk and we've planned to cultivate special relationships with them. We've organized special breakfasts, set up one-to-one lunch chats, attended District ball games as a group -- the Works.

In many instances these relationships have floundered miserably. As a new teacher, the first two kids I worked with in this capacity either missed our appointments regularly and/or continued to fail their classes. I was upset by what I saw as my failure to connect, but I never really looked at the extreme artificiality of these arrangements.

When these programs failed on a larger scale they were usually dropped without further discussion. I think teachers either saw the kids as ungrateful, beyond our reach, or themselves as failing. As a brand new teacher I remember that I thought it was my fault and that I didn't really want to dwell on it.

On the other hand, I did develop some real relationships with kids I taught. We shared some common work. We liked each other and we connected both inside and outside of school. I didn't stop to examine the difference in these relationships until now. I just assumed I'd gotten my act together.

Nobody wants to be "assigned" a friend. Yuck. I don't think I'd be rushing to meet with my assigned friend. Is that an oxymoron? In any case, I don't think I'd appreciate the realization that someone thought I needed an assigned friend. I don't think I'd be grateful.

More smarts

If you add the layers of difference that separate us from most of our students, layers of race, class, culture etc., these efforts at support positively smack of bias and condescension. They certainly don't reflect mutual respect or a mobilization of our students' strengths to support their educational journeys.

I feel like I've been trying hard to interest students in a tour that only a few of them will be allowed to actually take. It's like I've been trying to sell them time shares for a vacation that they're not sure they'll enjoy because their family and friends aren't really invited to come along.

Regardless of what position I take next, one thing is clear, I need to pursue this topic further. I need to "bounce back with more smarts" as Sean said. This work can't be about "my" taking a special approach, it's got to be about "our" designing a system that truly supports all children -- not here or there, but everywhere!"

[Editor's note: Deb is co-moderator of the MiddleWeb listserve.]


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