RESILIENCE MATTERS!

Martin Seligman, Carol Dweck and Alison Duckworth all stress that resilience is a key aspect of success in learning and whether you are a student, a parent, a teaching assistant, a teacher, an engineer, a director or a  headteacher this is a critical issue!

I was looking on-line and I found an article that talked about five ways to improve resilience and ensure long-term, positive impact on teaching and learning.

1. What do you believe in? What can we learn from an examination of our beliefs and how might they impact on our work, our families and our lives? Are we aware that our emotions tend to follow our beliefs? With this in mind, how can we challenge our beliefs? 
2. How are you connected to others? Having a close network of friends and colleagues who we can speak to about problems, challenges and learning helps us to tease out issues before they become problems. How supported do you feel and how much support do you feel able to give? Feeling isolated at home, at school or at work is likely to impact on resilience in a negative way. 
3. Are you spending time thinking about what you are doing? Spend time reflecting on what you have done, and planning what you will do next. This is action-based and purposeful and can be particularly effective at building resilience. Be pragmatic about what you haven't achieved. Was it a realistic? If not, rethink. If it was, build it into your planning. 
4. Are you being challenged? Staying in some comfortable and ‘safe' boundaries won't stretch your practice or give you evidence of your developing skills and expertise. 
5. Are you learning from everything you are doing? Rethink your responses to the more challenging aspects of your work and your life. Recognise that every situation and opportunity offers a chance to learn and develop. 

Resilience isn't about the creation of a world with no problems or challenges. It's about being able to respond in a positive way, whether in the short, medium or long term, to the events that make up our lives.