Resilience is a life skill that all teachers should focus on throughout students' educational career. In many classrooms, resiliency and perseverance may be discussed early in the year and then left out of the classroom dialogue, or not discussed at all. As members of the school environment, we cannot wait for resilience to materialize organically for each student. To place an emphasis on resilience in the classroom is to realize that creating people who are able to respond to challenges and setbacks is an important goal of education, if not the goal.
When students have resilience, they are open to learning because they believe that they can learn, they are receptive to assistance because it is not a criticism of their abilities, and they are comfortable not understanding concepts immediately because they see learning as a pursuit of knowledge and know that motivation and effort are just as important as knowing how to do something.
When students do not have these attitudes about learning, we must not only encourage them to be confident and "keep trying," but we should also teach them about resilience and perseverance.
In my classroom, conversations about resilience consistently materialize in a number of ways:
- Morning meeting discussions about goal setting and perseverance, including recognizing that everyone has something she is trying to overcome.
- Sharing stories (through videos and picture books) about people who have experienced great amounts of