One school year, I noticed that my students were struggling. Many were going through life challenges, unbeknownst to those around them. These difficult experiences were on top of the hard experiences that often come with preteen growth and change. I started to reflect a lot on how to help my students.
The song “Rise Up” by Andra Day was popular on the radio. The words “rise like the day, in spite of the ache” stood out to me. I felt inspired to talk with my students about resilience. I could not take away their struggles, nor would I minimize them. What I could do was support them amid the challenges they were experiencing (challenges which may or may not go away).
Resilience is defined as one’s ability to recuperate from or adapt to challenges. Resilience does not mean we aren’t impacted by a challenge, but instead that we are less overcome by hardship. We’re able to continue forward, as the difficulty walks beside us.
Inspired by the song by Andra Day, I shared with my students about a personal challenge I was experiencing. I shared about how one of my parents had been ill most of my life, and this was sometimes difficult for me. I shared with my students that all of us are climbing mountains, even if they are invisible to others. We all deserve to be treated in a way that recognizes the strength that scaling our mountains requires.
One of my students raised their hand. Of their own accord, they shared about how hard it was to watch one of their siblings being treated differently than other children due to a disability. Other students started to share. Experiences varied from challenges with bullying, to grief over loss, to feelings about moving and changing schools. Each student intently listened to one another. My students outstretched their arms, giving each other hugs and words of validation. A room full of “strangers” had suddenly turned into a room full of humans.
In Dare to Lead, Brene Brown talks about the armor we all wear. The armor is composed of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we use to protect ourselves. Brene states that as teachers, “We can’t always ask our students to take off the armor at home, or even on their way to school, because…safety may require self-protection. But what we can do, and what we are ethically called to do, is create a space…where all students can walk in and, for that day or hour, take off the crushing weight of their armor, hang it on a rack, and open their heart to truly being seen. (Students) deserve one place where they can rumble with vulnerability and their hearts can exhale.”
When teachers model vulnerability, we create a space in our classroom where our students feel safe to be themselves. As students share and empathize with others, they build connections. These connections can support them as they adapt to the challenges they face, thus increasing their resilience. Optimism, defined as a positive feeling of hope or confidence in the future, can grow for students as they talk with others and see that they are not alone in their struggle.
The R in the PERMA Theory of Wellbeing, created by Dr. Martin Seligman, stands for relationships. Dr. Seligman shares that connecting with others is one of the best medicines for the challenges of life. Connection increases our resilience as we learn to recover and continue forward after hardship with the support of others.
At the end of the song “Rise Up”, Andra Day sings: “All we need, all we need is hope, and for that we have each other. And we will rise, we will rise.”
As I support my students to connect with one another, I have seen their feeling of optimism and their resilience to life’s struggles increase. As Brene Brown writes, when our students have the space to “rumble with vulnerability…it can and often does change the trajectory of their life.”
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