My colleague Debbie Fiske skinned her knee while running with our cross country team recently, and when I read her eloquent reflection about the experience, I got to thinking about resiliency.What exactly do we mean by resiliency? Why do some of us have it, while others seem not to? Can we teach resiliency? Is it inherent? How do we, as educators or as adults, foster it in adolescents?These are some of the questions we grapple with in our Student Life Team meetings, in which we focus on the student experience from Upper Prep through Form 6. We examine cases and search for similarities, wondering how to increase resiliency in adolescents so they are well-equipped and ready to handle the disappointments that undoubtedly await them. We look at our own students who experience setbacks -- not making a team, missing the Honor Roll by 0.1, not being chosen for a select group. Some kids move on quickly with a "that's the way things go" attitude, while others feel sad or angry and struggle to see their way through the disappointment.Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection, which appeared this summer in the "Education Life" section of The New York Times, made the point that colleges were seeing and responding to the same thing on a much larger scale. In growing numbers college students are experiencing anxiety, depression, and even suicide as they face the reality that they aren't perfect, that they can't do it all, that they may earn a grade below an A.Other literature -- such as The Gift of Failure, by Jessica Lahey, How to Raise an Adult, by Julie Lythcott-Haims, and Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope, and Optimism in Your Child by Robert Brooks and Sam Goldstein -- reinforce the need to talk to our students about the value of making (and learning from) mistakes, the benefit of struggling to figure things out, and the necessity of falling down and getting back up. We must provide opportunities for them to "fail" where the ante is not high, in a safe place. This is the kind of risk-taking through which resiliency is developed and strengthened. Students make a mistake, they falter, they see that it is OK, and that they will be OK. When we can provide (and model) this type of learning, we are indeed providing a life skill.
