Building Resilience to cope with the Teaching Challenges
by Dr. Theodora Papadopoulou
The new
academic year is flirting us and another educational trip is about to begin for
both teachers and students. The excitement and desire for exploration is also
accompanied by the anxiety of reaching the high expectations that all parties
have set for themselves.
Younger
students are eager to have a great time with their peers in a safe school
environment that offers unconditional support every time they need it whereas
older ones remain focused on successfully passing the exams and receiving the certificates
they so eagerly want.
Both parents
and teachers seek ways to increase students’ commitment to their goals without
leading them to emotional and psychical burn out. What is worth considering
though is that educators and most particularly the new ones, are also
threatened by physical and emotion exhaustion. The aim of this article is to
identify how internal strengths and external strategies promote teacher
resilience.
It
is very important to sustain the teachers’ commitment and reduce teacher s’ attrition
throughout the academic year.
Let’s start by exploring the resilience process for
every individual. According to Richardson, Neiger, Jensen and Kumpfer (1990), the
resilient process is a function of conscious or unconscious choice. It is
explained as an interaction with the environment and making a choice to
reintegrate with resilience back to a state of stability or to continue in a
state of uncertainty. This means that people have a choice -consciously or
unconsciously- of how their reactions to the various disruptions of life will
shape their future. The coping process or “resilience” could result in growth,
knowledge and self- understanding or possibly not.
Masten (1994) underlines that the term “resiliency”
carries the implication of a
personality trait. We should bear in mind that the
conceptions regarding resilience as a process are emerging from various
scientific fields such as psychiatry, psychology and sociology. The idea of
resilience as a process, that people can learn to bounce back from negative
life experiences, is a fairly new approach. It challenges people and educators
in particular to focus on strengths instead of deficits.
Many
of us keep wondering whether all individuals are able to engage themselves into
a resilience building process.
It seems that when an individual of any age encounters
adversity, he/she
experiences individual and environmental protective
aspects that buffer against adversity.
With enough “protection”, the individual adapts to
that adversity without experiencing a significant disruption in his/her life
(Silliman, 1998).
The individual stays within a comfort zone or moves to
a level of increased
resilience because of the emotional strength and
healthy coping mechanisms developed in the process of overcoming the adversity.
It should be noted that without the necessary protection, an individual may go through
a process of psychological disruption. It is well known that stress evokes
tension. Thus, the psychological changes that accompany stress reactions lead
to a disruption in life (Flach, 1997). Over time the individual incorporates
the processes from that disruption. The availability though of personal and
environmental protective factors may govern the type of behaviours
incorporated. Richardson et al., 1990, believe that positive or negative behaviour
assimilation is just the process of life.
The resilient individual, throughout the various
stages of life, develops problem solving skills. That means that resilient
people are aware of how to find and use information to solve problems. When they
face various difficulties in life, they
employ a problem solving model in order to determine alternatives for dealing
with their dilemma (Jones, 2003).
According to Wolin and Wolin (1993), internal
resiliencies are: initiative, independence, insight, relationship, humour,
creativity, and morality.
Henderson and Milstein (2003) indicate there are also
individual internal
protective practices that promote
resiliency-facilitating behaviours.
These behaviours are:
• Gives
of self in service to others and /or a cause
• Uses
life skills, including good decision making, assertiveness, impulse
control, and
problem solving
• Has
ability to be a friend, ability to form positive relationships
• Has
sense of humour
• Has
self discipline
• Has
independence
• Has
positive view of personal future
• Has
flexibility
• Has
capacity for and connection to learning
• Has
self-motivation
• Has
personal competence, is “good at something”
• Has feelings of self-worth and self-confidence
An understanding of how adults exposed to both
personal and work-related
stress bounce back is a relatively new but very
interesting field of study. It is proved though that the process of resilience
building in adults is similar to the one for children (Richardson et al.,
1990). Benard (1991) characterizes
resilient children as socially competent, with life skills such as problem
solving, critical thinking and the ability to take initiative. Resilient
children usually have special interests, goal directedness and motivation to achieve
in both school and in life (Benard, 1991).
Higgins (1994) characterizes resilient adults
similarly. According to Maddi and Khoshaba (2005) resilience could be learned
in adulthood. They state that resilience is not just an ability one is born
with, but something all people can learn and improve. This, of
course, opens a new window to the role of parents, educators and society itself.
There are six consistent strategy themes -bonding,
boundaries, life skills, support, high expectations, and meaningful opportunities-
that show how schools as well as families and communities can provide both the environmental
protective factors and the conditions that foster individual protective factors.
Educational organisations of all kinds must have practices that operate to build
resilience by enhancing a sense of inner self, which in turn allows the
individual to build the skills needed for engagement with the outer world
(Robinson, 2000).
The question is whether the beginning teacher who
faces situational hazards is able to build resilience. Traits such as good
self-esteem, adaptability and achievement goals do act as buffering strategies.
Another equally important factor that helps teachers
to build resilience is the positive feedback and relationships that they
receive and build with students, parents, and fellow colleagues. The
relationship support that teachers receive helps them build a sources of
confidence, motivation, and self-efficacy. (Milner, 2002).
The feeling of being an effective educator is being
challenged by multiple factors. All educators, and most particularly EFL
teachers, face serious challenges throughout the academic year. Not only do they have to work long hours
including out of school preparation and the creation of extra curriculum material in order to make their lessons
appealing and effective to students, but also cope with all they types of difficulties
students may encounter. Learning differences, cultural diversities and negative
learning and personal experiences are some of the challenges that educators
have to successfully cope with. What is
more, they must successfully cooperate and communicate with colleagues and
parents. For all the reasons mentioned above, they should build strong
resilience in order to sustain their passion and desire for work even in a not very fruitful work environment.
Since for some researchers, resilience
is no longer considered an innate trait, but a process that happens through an
interaction between the individual and the environment, it would be wise to
encourage teachers to take ownership of their behaviour and become more
resilient in order to avoid burn out. The obstacles will never cease to exist in
any field and the chaotic nature of life is definitely going to continue.
Teachers need to develop strategies for resilience in
order to enable themselves to thrive in difficult environments and continue
being role models for their students. On top of everything, we should not
forget that resilient teachers can create resilient students both in school and
in life.
References
Benard, B. (1991). Fostering resiliency in kids:
Protective factors in the family, school, and community. San Francisco: Western Regional Educational
Laboratory.
Flach, F. (1997). Resilience: The power to bounce
back when the going gets tough! New York:
Hatherleigh Press.
Jones, J. (2003). Building resiliency. Retrieved in
August, 2011 from
http://www.askdrjami.org/resiliency/resiliency.html.
Johnson, S. (2006). The workplace matters: Teacher
quality, retention, and effectiveness. Washington DC:
National Education Association.
Maddi, S.R., & Khoshaba, D.M (2005). Resilience
at work. New York:
AMACOM. American Management Association.
Milstein, M.M., & Farkas, J. (1988). The
overstated case of educator stress. Journal of Educational Administration, 26, 232-249.
Wolin, S.J. (2004). Presenting a resilience paradigm
for teachers. In H.Waxman, Y. Padron, & J. Gray (Ed). Educational
resiliency: Student, teacher, and school perspectives (pp. 189-204). Greenwich, C: Information
Age Publishing.
