Autumn 2006

The big picture - in education

How to strengthen your resilience in tough times

When faced with adversity, how do you bounce back and become more resilient than ever? Jerry Patterson and Paul Kelleher propose some answers to this question. They explain the three dimensions of resilience and demonstrate how you can use that knowledge to your own advantage.

Teachers and school leaders remember the good old days when resources were adequate, leadership was stable and forces outside the school trusted those inside the school to do the best job possible in educating students.

Whether this version of history is fact or illusion hardly matters. Today, few teachers or school leaders would characterise their jobs as smooth sailing. In fact, a more appropriate metaphor is trying to ride out the relentless storms that come and go and come again. In the face of these storms, some educators find ways to remain optimistic and move ahead, some of their colleagues struggle to tread water, and others eventually drown. What accounts for these differences?

The deeper meaning of resilience

Resilience is much more than a convenient label for being able to bounce back. It means using your energy productively to emerge from adversity stronger than ever.

As a concept, resilience is made up of three dimensions: how you interpret what happens to you, how you use your resilience capacity to tackle adversity, and how you take actions to become more resilient in the face of adversity.

Let’s examine each of these dimensions and how they relate to the world of teachers and schools.

The dimension of interpretation

Something bad happens. You react. Something else then happens because of your reaction. You react again.

Suppose your school is faced with significant budget cuts. The school reacts in some way. One school becomes pessimistic that its work is not valued, so it spends a lot of energy in the victim role, blaming others. Another school remains more optimistic, realising that this so-called crisis will pass, and continues to spend the energy on helping students learn.

The most resilient educators are what we call realistic optimists. Realistic optimists demonstrate the ability to maintain a positive outlook in the face of adversity, without denying the constraints posed by reality. In other words, realistic optimists acknowledge, as in our example above, the reality of budget constraints. They don’t try to deny the reality. Instead, they ask the question, ‘How can I work within this reality to make good things happen for students?’

Here is how one educator, Loucrecia Collins, described her reality of growing up poor. ‘In growing up in my community, you were born into classes, and whatever class you were born into, you were supposed to stay that way. Because of my colour, I was not allowed to go to a public library until I was 13. But I refused to be a victim of that reality. I found other ways to get books and I read all of the time. I never gave up hope that I could move ahead.’

Today, Loucrecia Collins is a university professor, helping college students build hope for their own futures in the face of whatever reality they encounter.

Realistic optimists demonstrate realistic optimism when they convey to their students, ‘You can do it, I believe in you, and I will not give up on you.’ Realistic optimists know there will be bumps and roadblocks along the way. They also believe that good things can happen, but it will require a lot of work.

The dimension of resilience capacity

Large or small, chronic or crisis, adversity happens. How you respond is determined, in part, by your resilience capacity in tough times. The amount of fuel in your resilience tank comes from three sources: your personal values, personal efficacy and personal energy.

Personal values define what you stand for as an educator. When resilient educators encounter adversity, they ask, ‘What matters most and how can I spend my resilience energy to achieve what matters most?’

One school leader told this story about how she used resilience capacity to stay focused on what matters most. ‘Teachers in my school know that I always put kid agendas ahead of adult agendas. I had a teacher come to me about a week ago complaining about the choice that his colleagues made for a textbook. The teacher informed me that he had used the other textbook for years and did not want to give it up. I informed him that he was part of the decision-making process and that the text was the best match for the students’ needs. I thanked him for being candid with me, but explained that the kid agenda is a higher priority than the adult agenda.’

Educators preserve their resilience capacity when they spend their resilience energy consistent with clearly understood personal values.

A second source of fuel in the resilience fuel tank is personal efficacy, or your belief in your capacity to accomplish challenging goals. Personal efficacy is composed of your sense of self-confidence plus your competence. Resilient educators draw upon their past competence (‘I have handled other adversity before’) to boost their confidence (‘I can get through this one too’), which in turn affects present competence and future confidence. Strong self-confidence and competence combine to create a belief that you can make a difference in the lives of those you serve.

Dimension of action

You move from resilience capacity to resilience strength when you add the dimension of action. You act on your values, act in a way consistent with your commitment to make a difference, and act by drawing on the reservoir of energy stored in your resilience tank. It is important to realise that, without action, your well-intentioned words are nothing more than New Year’s resolutions without follow-through.

When you are faced with deciding whether to take action during tough times as an educator, two questions can help guide you.

1. What are the odds that I will fail? None of us wants to set ourselves up for failure. Particularly when it comes to affecting students’ lives, failure is not part of a track record to be proud of. So, you need to weigh the odds of failure against the odds of success before you act.
2. What’s at stake if I fail? You may lose a sports bet with a friend who supports a rival team and not much is at risk with the loss. If, on the other hand, you fail to improve student achievement, a lot more than money is at stake. Being clear about what’s at risk if you fail helps you to assess whether the risk is worthwhile.

Resilient educators know they will take risks and have failures; they also know they will live to see another day. Few decisions are irreversible. One teacher summarised her approach to risk and failure by saying, ‘It doesn’t bother me if I mess up big-time to say so. Rarely is it something that can’t be fixed. Even if it is in concrete, it can be pulled out quickly. You see, wet concrete covers nicely.’

The three dimensions of resilience we have outlined will help you move ahead in the face of adversity. When you apply these concepts, you can have confidence that you will weather the inevitable storms, and that you will continue on the path to stronger resilience.

Reference

Patterson, J & Kelleher, P (2005). Resilient School Leaders: Strategies for turning adversity into achievement, ASCD, Alexandria, Virginia.

Jerry Patterson is professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Alabama, Birmingham in the USA.

Paul Kelleher serves as a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Education at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au