Integrating the Science of Resilience in Schools

Integrating the Science of Resilience in Schools

Schools are places where young people spend a great deal of their time, and as such they play a key role in the development of students’ resilience. This occurs in a range of ways — via formal teaching opportunities and the informal learning that occurs through modelling and practice of new skills.

Elementary or primary school is an excellent time to begin teaching resilience to children. The earlier children begin building resilience, the more likely it is to “stick.” However, resilience is not something that can only be built in young children; children in middle school can also benefit greatly from resilience building.

A great resource and suggestions for resilience building in young children comes from Professor Helen McGrath’s Bounce Back! program.

“Bounce Back!” is an acronym for some of the foundational principles of resilience, specifically:
B – Bad times don’t last, and things get better.
O – Other people can only help if you share with them.
U – Unhelpful thinking only makes you feel worse.
N – Nobody is perfect – not you, not your friends, not your family, not anybody!
C – Concentrate on the good things in life, no matter how small.
E – Everybody suffers, everybody feels pain and experiences setbacks; they are a normal part of life.
B – Blame fairly – negative events are often a combination of things you did, things others did, and plain bad luck.
A – Accept what you can’t change and try to change what you can.
C – Catastrophizing makes things worse – don’t fall prey to believing in the worst interpretation.
K – Keep things in perspective. Even the worst moment is but one moment in life.

McGrath applies these principles to building these components of resilience:
Courage
Managing feelings
Humor
Relationship skills
Self-knowledge
Goal setting skills
Optimistic thinking
Helpful thinking skills (avoiding cognitive distortions)

While planning a lesson, the above components of resilience should be identified and related activities must be incorporated. This definitely in a long run will help children to cope up with stress related situation.