The Road to Resiliency It all began on a soon to be sunny September morning. Our district was in the midst of a rash of depressing acts with one teen murdered by another, three horrific suicides, a stopped suicide pact, and a massive increase in student depression. I was checking my Twitter account and there was a link to an article on grit. Being a coach and a teacher, I repeatedly succumb to, and believe in, the age old discussion about kids today not having enough grit, stick- with- it- ness, commitment, or work ethic (yes, Monty Python s sketch about the well- off Yorkshiremen talking about life being tough comes to mind). I was mildly interested in the title and topic. As I read the New York Times article by Paul Tough I found myself saying, Yes, finally, someone is writing what we all know but don t have the background, other than our own experiences, to say, because not only was Tough writing about the need for students to develop their resilience, but he was backing it up with significant and solid research. Repeatedly he cited Dr. Angela Duckworth and the work being done at the KIPP schools based on Duckworth s work to support his claims that grit is more important to success than intellect, socioeconomic positioning, or SAT scores (he was citing American research). I did what any teacher would do: I voraciously researched the area; I used my PLN (Personal Learning Network) to get more information, to bounce ideas off of people, to challenge assumptions, to be guided and to be taught; I contacted Paul Tough, Angela Duckworth, and the KIPP schools. My learning curve was vertical, again and what I found was that it was Duckworth s work that would be most useful to me based on our context. The KIPP schools, though doing some very good things, are programs of choice: ours are not, and they were building their programs from Duckworth s work. Tough, though knowledgeable and articulate, was working on a book and was still in the process of researching and putting it all together. Dr. Duckworth was the one who was on the cutting edge and who had the research and learning to answer the myriad of questions I had. Luckily, several things aligned. It needs to be unequivocally stated here, that the work that I am doing and the learning we are working on in this area would not have been possible without my community of support. I am fortunate to have a rich and brilliant PLN that includes my wife, teachers, administrators, academics, psychologists, counsellors, former students, and discordant rabble- rousers from many, many different contexts. Also, the support we have appreciated from our district leadership has encouraged and enabled our work on this project exponentially. In November I was scheduled to fly to Boston for a conference on 21 st Century Learning and the Brain. I mentioned the connections to our Superintendent and she suggested that I see if I could stop in Philadelphia either coming from or going to the conference to meet with Dr.
Duckworth who was gracious enough to fit me into her very busy schedule as I was heading to Boston. This would prove to be a pivotal meeting. As fate would have it, several things aligned to compound the importance of this area of work and focus. I had recently returned from a provincial conference of student leaders where one presentation in particular hit chords around the room and informed us all that the tragedies plaguing our districts (suicides and depression) were province- wide (and beyond). In addition to this, as I was leaving home I got a text from a former student of ours: I need to talk to you. This was our top graduate from the year before who had earned a full- ride scholarship to our country s toughest university to get into. He was wondering why he was there and was ready to quit. He was a star in every possible measure, but he was ready to pack it in after 3 months. Depending on your belief system, it seemed to be clear that things were conspiring to force me to understand the significance and importance of the work being lead by the team at the University of Pennsylvania. I met with Dr. Duckworth and by the time I left my mind was spinning with new learning and many, many new questions. However, most importantly, she introduced me to the world of Positive Psychology and the significance of the work being done and led by her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. While I had dipped my toe in the water with the Tough article, Dr. Duckworth helped me realize the significance of the work her colleagues were doing. Adding to the synergy of the moment, while in Boston, I attended a session by Dr. Scott Seider from the University of Boston whose research showed that schools will be successful if they focus on character education and the importance of such focused education for our adolescents. This session and subsequent conversations we had helped solidify for me the need for us to focus on grit education if we are serious about preparing our students for the 21 st Century. I returned and used my spare moments to research the area more thoroughly. I also invited others to join me and they did: challenging, questioning, suggesting, deepening, and broadening the work. The more I delved into Dr. Duckworth s work, the more I found reference to work on resiliency training being done at the University of Pennsylvania. I began looking more deeply into this and realized that while grit was one important part of student and life success, there was more. Students need to be resilient overall and they need to develop their skills in these areas. Grit was a part of resilience. I took this work and my thinking to our district s leadership committee on 21 st Century Learning and received considerable support that this was an area certainly missing in the curriculum, especially in our secondary programs. I was sure that I was on the right track, but needed more information from the people that were researching and challenging the findings.
Peter Schulman and Dr. Martin Seligman sent me much information about Positive Psychology and the various applications and research the University of Pennsylvania was leading in this area. The area was exciting, deep, and well researched. It took me a lot of time to wade through the information, materials, and various studies. The value of the work to improving student resilience was immutable; however, the University of Pennsylvania had a problem. The US Military also saw the value of their work and purchased all of the time possible to benefit returning and existing soldiers. We work in a public education system that is diverse and contextually unique, and that does not have vast resources to draw on. Despite limited resources, Mr. Schulman was very accommodating and felt that it would be possible to get a training program into place; however, we do not have the financial resources available to make this work. What we do have are excellent and passionate teachers that we have confidence can take the work being done and figure out effective ways to teach it to our students within a 21 st Century framework if provided with the right supports and training. I was, and still am, very appreciative of the help offered by these gentlemen as they gave me the information I needed to commit to the importance of resilience training. I believe that their work should be expanded in a meaningful way so that all adolescents can benefit from it. Unfortunately, that would mean decision makers seeing the value of positive psychology for adolescence and having the strength and conviction to do what children need. I don t know how many sad, depressing, and fatal stories that will take because there is no shortage of evidence that it is needed, yet it is not happening. In May I was at the Global Finals for Destination Imagination (talk about a group of people that is well on its way to developing resiliency) and stopped in Philadelphia on my way home. I was able to go to the University of Pennsylvania and look at some of the research and resources they were working with and to talk with students in the psychology programs there who were able to confirm for me the legitimacy of what I was thinking and dreaming. On this visit I was able to get some valuable resources and was introduced to the work of Dr. Jane Gillham. I left there convinced we were not only on the right track, but that we were also on the precipice of something fundamentally important. I returned home and found more and more support from people who were seeing the connections and reading the literature/research. I began to resource people who I felt would be key players and leaders in developing this work for our students. We bought copies of Flourish by Dr. Seligman and The Resilience Factor by Dr. Karen Reivich and Dr. Andrew Shatte. In July of this year I posted the following on my blog (http://whynot- gfussell.blogspot.com/): Up to a quarter of teens and young adults experience depression, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders reported the CBC in a June expose (Teens with anxiety and depression can skip referrals June 22, 2012).
The rates of depression are accelerating in epidemic proportions. In Western countries, we have witnessed a tenfold increase in the incidents of depression across two generations in the 20 th century. Current estimates indicate that almost 10 percent of children experience clinical depression before the age of fourteen, and up to 20 percent of adolescents experience a clinical depression before they graduate from high school. (P.M. Lewinsohn, H. Hops, R. Roberts, and J. Seeley (1993), Adolescent psychopathology: I. Prevalence and incidence of depression and other DSM- IIIR disorders in high school students, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102, 110-20.) This number is increasing not declining as societal pressures continue to collude to destroy the resilience of our youth. According to the US Department of Labor, our students will hold 10 14 jobs by their 38 th birthday (Did You Know 2.0 June 2007 by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod) and will have multiple careers during their working lives. Many of today s college majors didn t exist 10 years ago. Our students will be responsible for creating their own opportunities. How can we prepare our students for this? According to Dr. Karen Reivich, Dr. Andrew Shatte and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, resilience is a key component of success and happiness. Resilience helps us to overcome obstacles, to steer through adversities, to bounce back when we are knocked down, and to reach out so that we can achieve all that we are capable of achieving (The Resilience Factor (2002) Karen Reivich, Ph.D., Andrew Shatte, Ph.D. p. 15). It seemed to me that this is missing in our pedagogy and something that would be very valuable for our students and society. Work in this area done at the University of Pennsylvania has shown that resilience is comprised of seven capabilities: emotion regulation, impulse control, empathy, optimism, causal analysis, self- efficacy, and reaching out. Most importantly, from my perspective, is that research has also shown that these are dynamic capabilities that can be improved with targeted work. While I have noticed that several elementary schools work on character education (7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Habits of Mind, etc.) I have not seen a concerted effort made at the secondary level. Dr. Scott C. Seider at Harvard has shown that schools that focus on character education (performance based or morality based) with adolescents can achieve positive and lasting results (Developing the Ethical Minds of Adolescents (2011). Preparing 21 st Century Minds: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Skills for the Future conference. Boston, Massachusetts.). However, we seem to embrace a more haphazard approach talking about citizenship, work habits, etc. in various classes based solely on the discretion and interests of individual teachers. I think we should deliberately and systematically use the work and research available to better prepare students psychologically and emotionally for the worlds they are in and will be entering.
At grades 8 and 9, I believe we should be working to develop the skills necessary for resilience as outlined by Drs. Reivich, Shatte, et al. This would equip them with skills, aptitudes, and mind- sets that will be helpful as they navigate their teen years and beyond. Then, in grades 10 12 we should be supporting our students to develop the skills necessary to flourish. Flourishing, as I refer to it here, comes from the work of Dr. Martin Seligman (Flourish (2011) Seligman. Free Press: New York) and is the goal of his Well- Being Theory which has five measurable elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. It seems interesting to me that when we ask parents what they want most for their children, their responses tend not to align with what they respond when we ask them what they want schools to teach. Why is this? There seems to be dissonance with this logic. Why would schools not teach well- being and achievement? What is the point of achievement without well- being? What is it going to take for us to see that our youth are very much missing a sense of well- being? What will it take for what we know to change what we do? I believe that we, in secondary schools, need to deliberately and methodically work to develop resilience and well- being in our students and am very appreciative of the work done at the University of Pennsylvania. I anticipate that if we are able to do this we will see improved student achievement academically, athletically, in the arts, in the trades, and in our communities. I believe we will see a reduction in student discipline issues and an increase in student satisfaction, efficacy and hope. After this post I received much feedback and spent much of my summer pondering where we were at, where we needed to get to, and how we might get there. I connected with Dr. Gillham and she gave me more resources, ideas, and support in order to move our work forward. At this point we have several projects underway. At Ecole Mark R. Isfeld Secondary School we have two teachers who are working to integrate resilience training into the program for 60 of our grade 8 s. At Lake Trail Middle School we have four teachers looking for discrete ways to teach the requisite skills through their newly launched POD program. At Glacier View Learning Centre, our school for alternate delivery of secondary curriculum, the staff is actively building their skills while looking for opportunities to introduce resiliency training into their work with the highest at- risk students in our district. We have a team of teachers at the Senior level who are developing a project that has students delve deeply into individual character traits. The work we are doing has received considerable support. Our Superintendent and Director of Student Services realize the significance of the work we are doing and are supporting and encouraging our leadership in this. Dr. Jane Gillham at the University of Pennsylvania has dedicated considerable time and energy as a consultant to helping us develop capacity and
understanding so that we can develop programs to meet the needs in our context. In fact, the significance of the work we are doing has gotten the attention of our Ministry of Education as we are not alone in recognizing the intense need to equip our students to face the myriad of nebulous challenges they will be facing as they navigate school and beyond. The next steps call for us to build capacity in our teachers who are attempting to integrate this learning into our curricula. We bought three new books this Fall that will help us with this: The Optimistic Child: Proven Program to Safeguard Children from Depression by Dr. Seligman, et al.; Smart Strengths: Building Character, Resilience and Relationships in Youth by Yeager, Fisher, and Shearon; and Paul Tough s new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. We need to develop a plan for how and when the resilience training should be applied and how it should be developed so that complete ownership is had by our students when they graduate. Finally, I think we have the ability to create something that can and will make sense for secondary programs; all we need to do is figure out how to make it accessible and systemic so that we can capitalize on the momentum of the need for change and to make it accessible for all youth in our system.