“Resilient means to bounce back from a setback such as a bad grade on a test, or not winning a game.”
– Seventh Grade Student
RESILIENT
“Being resilient means not letting life’s obstacles and problems make you give up, but keep going even though it is hard.”
– 11th Grade Student
Use the information in this section to help you introduce the “resilient” attribute to students. You can use the question stem “How does this attribute make you a better leader?” to start a discussion with your students and to check for comprehension (see the Additional Resources section in this chapter for more information to further your personal understanding).
Explaining “Resilient” to Students
We all have to deal with pressure, stressful situations, and setbacks. How do you feel when you face tough challenges? How do you react if you are not successful at achieving an important goal? Do others see you as someone who doesn’t give up? Resilient means continuing to try even in the face of failure or adversity. When you are resilient, you are able to adapt to change and learn from challenges. To be resilient, it’s important to believe in your ability to learn and grow. If you are resilient, then you do not give up, and you keep going even though it might be hard. This helps you learn how to deal with different situations or change.
What “Resilient” Looks Like
Resilient leaders:
• keep working on something, even when it is challenging
• don’t give up
• maintain their composure under stress
• tolerate ambiguity or uncertainty
• adapt readily to new situations
• handle mistakes or setbacks with poise and grace
• put failures into perspective and do not dwell on them
• seek out help and support from others
• enjoy learning
• learn from failure or mistakes
What Gets in the Way?
Without resilience, you will lose out on opportunities to learn from challenges or setbacks, which can limit your potential to grow and adapt in the future. Review the following list and note the items that might be keeping you from being resilient.
• You shut down when something doesn’t come easily to you.
• You ruminate about setbacks, rather than reflecting on how to learn from them.
• You are unwilling to ask for help.
• You give up when things get challenging.
• You blame others when something goes wrong.
• You don’t respond well to change.
• You think everything should come easily.
• You overreact to setbacks.
• Being able to appreciate challenges and setbacks as learning opportunities can help you become more resilient.
Suggestions for Improving “Resilient”
Work with your students to discuss and establish some ways to build competency in this attribute. Below is a list to help support this exercise. Feel free to develop your own strategies or modify these suggestions.
You may also consider doing an activity with your students (see the Activity Center section in this chapter for suggestions) or asking them to write about the attribute (see the Journal Prompts section in this chapter for suggestions) to help build student understanding.
In conjunction with your students, figure out how you are going to support each other as a group or class to build competency in this leadership attribute.
• Recognize the signals of stress. Learn to pay attention to your body’s response to challenges or setbacks. What are your physiological responses? Do you feel your heart rate going up? Do you get hot? Do you clench your jaw? The sooner you recognize that your body is going into stress, the sooner you can do something to manage it.
• Regroup. When you face failures, think: What can I learn from this so that I can do better next time? Identify people or places you can look to for support.
• Develop self-care rituals. These can be as simple as taking a deep breath or silently counting to ten whenever you start to feel upset or stressed. These short breaks will not take long and can help you approach the problem with a clear mind.
• Put setbacks in perspective. Do not run away from mistakes and failures, but do not dwell on them either. Strive to get beyond the pain and disappointment and refocus on what you can learn from the experience and what you can apply to future potentially stressful circumstances.
• Create a plan. Create a plan to focus on improving your resilience. Share this plan with a trusted peer or mentor.
• Develop a support system. Seek and build a diverse group of people you can rely on in difficult times. Having social support can help you deal with stressful or challenging situations more effectively.
• Become a continuous learner. Learn new skills, gain new understanding, and apply those lessons during times of stress and change. Be open to learning new approaches and letting go of old behaviors and skills that do not work anymore.
Here are some suggestions for activities that may be modified to fit your context and the students with whom you are working.
• Book introduction. Find a book to read with students that has a character who either demonstrates the “resilient” attribute or who would have benefitted from being more resilient, and have students discuss or journal about the character’s behavior (see the Suggested Books section of this chapter for books that could be used for this activity).
• Resilience challenges. Have students identify what can keep people from being resilient. Have them find a partner and discuss a situation in which they could have been more resilient and what they could have done differently.
• Resilience stories. Have students think about a situation (fictional or real) where a person displays resilience. Write two stories (or comic strips, videos, skits, plays, etc.), one in which the character acts resiliently and one in which the character does not. In each story, focus on the impact of these actions.
• Mistakes are a gift. Have students create a song, spoken word, poem, or rap titled: “Mistakes are a gift.”
• Assess resilience. Take the “Resilience Assessment” below and discuss results with a partner. Make a plan of some resilience strategies to work on.
• Resilience reflection. Ask students to work with a partner to respond to the following: Think of a time when you were unstoppable. What was your mindset like? How did you feel? What were the results of your actions? How can you use what you learned during this experience the next time you are faced with a difficult challenge?
• Failure bulletin board. Build a culture that appreciates failure as an opportunity for learning by having a failure bulletin board in your classroom. On this board, students celebrate failures as indicators that they are taking risks and trying new things.
• Resilience in action. Have students identify a place in their life where they believe practicing more resilience would have a positive impact on their lives. (Examples: learning to play an instrument, playing a sport, improving their mindset about a challenging class, practicing getting constructive feedback, etc.) Have students practice the ways to develop resilience in their selected setting and journal about or discuss the results of their actions.
Look over the items in this checklist and darken the circle that most closely matches your assessment of yourself in each of five areas of resilience. What does your list tell you about your degree of resilience? What strengths can you rely on during times of challenge or change? What areas should you develop to become more resilient? Use what you learn to create a development plan to help you strengthen your resilience.
Adapted from Pulley, M. L., & Wakefield, M. (2001). Building resiliency: How to thrive in times of change. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Choose one or more of the journal prompts appropriate for the age level you work with. Feel free to modify or extend the prompt. Give students time to reflect on the questions in a personal journal. To extend the exercise, ask students to share their reflections with a peer or small group.
• Think of a situation in which you were not as resilient as you could have been. What did that prevent you from learning? How could you have responded differently?
• What healthy strategies could you use to cope with setbacks or challenges?
• Think of people you know who stay calm and collected during stressful situations or failures. What are their strategies?
• Reflect on stories that you have read. Describe a situation in which a character’s resilience benefits them and/or others. How might you relate the situation to something in your life?
• Why might it make you uncomfortable to ask for help when you’ve made a mistake? What support do you need to overcome your discomfort?
• What is the cost of not being resilient? What are the benefits of being resilient?
Integrating the Attribute into Your Curriculum
Choose an activity from your planning guide or syllabus. After your students complete the activity, relate the activity back to the “resilient” attribute with a debriefing conversation. Below are suggested questions. Choose or modify questions based on your students’ developmental level, your activity, and your context.
This debrief can take the form of a full-group discussion. You might consider giving students time to reflect on their answers with partners or in small groups before asking them to share responses with the larger group. Alternatively, you may decide to ask students to work in small groups to share their responses on flip charts, and then have a gallery walk where students walk around the room and read what other students have written, potentially adding their own comments or thoughts.
• How did the activity help you understand the attribute “resilient”?
• How did you work on being resilient during this activity?
• How did other students demonstrate being resilient during the activity?
• What does it mean to be resilient?
• Why is it important to be resilient?
• How can being resilient make you a better leader?
• How can a lack of being resilient impact leadership?
• How can being resilient be developed?
• What are some ways you could practice being resilient moving forward?
• How will you demonstrate being resilient in your interactions with others?
• What impact can increasing resiliency have on you?
• Identify a person, past or present, who demonstrates being resilient. What specific actions demonstrate this person being resilient?
• Identify a book character who demonstrates being resilient. What specific actions of this character demonstrate being resilient?
Questions to Assess Understanding
Consider giving the following questions to students to determine if you need to spend more time explaining this attribute.
• What does it mean to be resilient? Give an example of someone you know who is resilient. How does this person demonstrate being resilient?
• What are three things you are going to work on in order to become more resilient?
Suggested Books to Introduce “Resilient”
The books listed below can be used to deepen younger students’ understanding of the “resilient” attribute.
• I Like Me! by N. Carlson
• After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again: A Story by D. Santat
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by J. Viorst
• Brave Irene by W. Steig
• Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle by C. Raschka
• The Most Magnificent Thing by A. Spires
• Nothing You Can’t Do! The Secret Power of Growth Mindsets by M.C. Ricci
• Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by M. Barnett
• Stories of Persistence by J. Colby
• Whistle for Willie by E.J. Keats
Additional Resources
This section provides additional places to look for help and advice to develop your personal knowledge, as an adult, about this attribute.
Brock, A., & Hundley, H. (2016). The growth mindset coach: A teacher’s month-by-month handbook for empowering students to achieve. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press.
Clerkin, C., & Ronayne. P. (n.d.). Resilience isn’t futile: How brain-science can help us thrive in increasingly complex work environments [Webinar]. Retrieved from http://insights.ccl.org/webinars/resilience-isnt-futile-how-brain-science-can-help-us-thrive-in-increasingly-complex-work-environments
Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner.
Greitens, E. (2016). Resilience: Hard-won wisdom for living a better life. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Hildrew, C. (2018). Becoming a growth mindset school: The power of mindset to transform teaching, leadership, and learning. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lama, D., & Tutu, D. (2016). The book of joy: Lasting happiness in a changing world. New York, NY: Avery.
Roger, D., & Petrie, N. (2016). Work without stress: Building a resilient mindset for lasting success. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Ruderman, M. N., Braddy, P. W., Hannum, K. M., & Kossek, E. E. (2013). Managing your whole life. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Sanguras, L. Y. (2017). Grit in the classroom: Building perseverance for excellence in today’s students. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
Seligman, M. E. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. New York, NY: Vintage.
Seligman, M. E. (2007). The optimistic child: A proven program to safeguard children against depression and build lifelong resilience. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Zolli, A., & Healy, A. M. (2012). Resilience: Why things bounce back. New York, NY: Free Press.
References
Pulley, M. L., & Wakefield, M. (2001). Building resiliency: How to thrive in times of change. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.