This week, I have been reading Promoting Resilience in the Classroom: A Guide to Developing Pupils Emotional and Cognitive Skills, by Carmel Cefai. Again, this presents a model of resilience-enhancing classrooms, which focuses on caring, prosocial, engaging, collaborative, and empowering classrooms. Within this, in order to achieve relatedness, autonomy, competence, and fun, Cefai (2008) suggests seven classroom processes that students should be a part of:

• Feeling connected with their teacher and their peers
• Being told that what they do is valid and worthwhile
• Are supported to engage in meaningful activities in which they feel autonomous and successful
• See their accomplishments and efforts recognised and celebrated
• Have their voice heard and their choices respected
• Share common values and beliefs related to learning all together cooperatively
• Work together collaboratively to achieve common goals

Examining these models is allowing me to identify common themes, as well as gain some insight on what is important to me. What i’m finding is that there are many resiliency models out there, but the majority are theoretically based and don’t include the practical strategies that teachers can take and apply within their classrooms. This books does include case studies and practical examples, but most are aimed towards the primary grades. This is something I hope to develop with my own model of resiliency in the classroom, with perhaps creating a little mini-unit on teaching the importance of vulnerability and failure. 

References

Cefai, C. ( 2008). Promoting resilience in the classroom: A guide for developing pupils’ emotional and cognitive skills. London: Jessica Kingsley.