Resilience – what does it mean? As I see it, it means being able to cope with the ups and downs of daily life. To be able to have a bad day and realise that it is just a bad day and that it too shall pass. To not want to get out of bed in the morning and yet still manage to drive ourselves to do so. To balance the stresses of life and still strive to be happy. To be resilient means to be able to go up or down but either way to bounce back.
This ability to bounce back in life is often underestimated. In a list of skills that we would like our young people to have where does it rate, if it is even there at all? There is an expression that is being used in the staffrooms and classrooms of Ireland at the moment- building learning power. And of course it is important that we teach our students the skills and ability to learn. To focus on how they can learn and that learning is lifelong. Yes, we need to build learning power. But we also need to build resilience. Resilience so that our young people have power behind the passion. Resilience so that they can cope just as well as they can calculate.
We need to start with the basics. Students of today need to be given the most fundamental skills – how to deal with choice, how to make an informed decision, how to problem solve, how to show empathy, how to seek support in life and where to seek this support. They need to know how to cope with and even embrace change. Coping with failure and being able to move on will help determine how they deal with life. On a daily basis these are the issues that they will face and need to deal with. It may seem simplistic but these skills are ones that they will require constantly in their personal and professional lives. They are valuable skills, essential life skills that we are currently neglecting in our education system. We need to look at meeting the needs of our students and the needs of society.
There is scope for a specific, tailored programme to build resilience in our young people at both junior and senior cycle in our secondary schools. Now is a time of change within the education system. This is the right time to look at implementing a programme such as this. The drive and interest is there amongst educators and we want to know how to teach our students coping and resiliency skills.
An initiative such as this would save thousands for our health and social welfare system in the long term. Adolescents with mental health difficulties with no resiliency can often grow into adults with long term mental health problems. We need to target the difficulty before it becomes a crisis. Mental health and wellbeing is now finally forming part of the educational agenda but it’s time to make it a priority.
Resiliency is not just a need that students have. We as adults and educators need to be resilient in order to deal with the many challenges that teaching and guiding the young people of today involves. The education system in Ireland has changed over the past number of years and continues to change and evolve. All of us need to be resilient to be able to cope with these changes and lead by example. We need to show our students that caring and coping are not ‘soft skills’ but essential skills.
Building learning power without building resilience will be like giving our students a future but one with no foundations. They will enter the colleges, universities and workplaces of Ireland with a drive and passion to learn but without the strength to cope with difficulties as they arise. Building resilience in our young people is not just desirable but indispensable. It will make us all stronger, more resourceful and ultimately more resilient. Life knocks us all down at times and the ability to bounce back is what distinguishes us as individuals. As Dean Becker, CEO of Adaptive Learning Systems stated:
‘’More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.”
Thus, resiliency is so valuable that we cannot ignore it any longer. If it is important in the cancer ward, the sports field and the boardroom it is time to bring it into the classroom.
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