Bouncebackability

​Question 4 of #PrimaryRocks on Monday 20th March looked at how to build resilience in children.  To begin with, I think it is important to define the term resilience:
Resilience: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. 
This is a quality that everybody needs but also a quality that is very difficult to build.  In this way it is very similar to go-karting: push too far or drive too close to the limit and you tip over the edge; don’t push far enough and you always stay in your comfort zone not making as much progress as you could.  The ideal is finding that Goldilocks sweet spot. 
Some parents do not like their child to be pushed out of their comfort zone and they try to protect their child from all things bad.  However, this is setting their children up for a grand fall later in life. 
Life is hard. 
We are introduced into the world and the first thing we experience is having our skulls squashed in order to travel the birth canal.  We come out crying and but most of us turn out OK in the end!  Parents and schools cannot shield children from harm all of their lives and so we should develop their resilience. 
A lot of this resilience should be taking place in the home but here are some ideas that can help build resilience in your school:

• Celebrate achievement and celebrate when children learn from their mistakes.  Failure in itself is not worth celebrating but learning from failure and the effort exerted is.  When an error is made, look at what that error is and how it can be fixed.  Demonstrate to the children errors in your own modelling and share techniques to fix this. 
• Model for them examples of you being resilient and not giving up.  Share things that you find tough, even things not in school life. 
• Discuss upcoming changes with them and help them to prepare properly. 
• Towards the end of the year talk about the transition into the next year group.  Share with them the excitement that change can bring and discuss feelings around the anxiety that change can cause.  Anxiety is a natural reaction to change and children should be aware of this.  Discuss the physical symptoms of anxiety and explain that they are not ill when they feel butterflies in their tummy, but it is anxiety. 
• Design tasks in which they will not quickly succeed.  Some of the least resilient children I have met are the brightest because they expect everything to be easy and to come to them with less effort than others.  These children need to be challenged so they know how to cope when they are faced with a problem they cannot initially solve. And they will come across a problem they cannot solve sooner or later. 
• Compete in sporting events.  Winning is excellent, but it is in losing that you build resilience and character.  Teach the children that it is ok to sometimes lose, but what is not ok is to give less than your all.  I would rather have a team who gave 100% and lost all their matches, than have a team who only gave 60% and won all their matches. 
• Give the children perspective.  Remind them that just because they have not won a game, it is not the end of the world. 
• Use positive language and reframe problems.  Ask children what they think they should do to solve the situation rather than giving them the correct answer.  If a child doesn’t understand what a word is, teach them to use a dictionary rather than just telling them what it means. 
• Go on trips.  Get out in nature and look around.  Ask them to read a map, plant some bulbs, go ghyll scrambling or undertake another skill that none of them have done before so that everyone is at the same level of experience.  These things are hard to do but with a little resilience, they will achieve it. 
• Ask them to explain their thinking and reason why.  When they give you an answer, ask them “Are you sure?”  Allow them thinking time and give them a chance to describe their thoughts. 
• Don’t expect perfection all the time.  Corrections are a way of showing that we have grown and learnt something.  Get rid of erasers in general writing and maths (they are OK for art though). Don’t accept poor effort or rushed first drafts though.  Although these two ideas initially sound contradictory, they can co-exist. 
• Have high expectations and stick to them, both in their attitude towards work and their effort. 
• Look back at work from earlier in the year that they found difficult and what they can now do.  Celebrate the journey.
• Praise the effort, not the result. 
• Don’t let them give up when the going gets tough (the tough get going!).

Resilience is not something that you can teach in one lesson.  It needs to become part of the fabric of your school, your ethos.  All teachers in your school need to give children the kinds of opportunities outlined above (and more besides) to develop that resilience in your children. 
We need to think more like Iain Dowie, the ex-footballer and ex-manager, who coined the word bouncebackability to describe his team’s performance.  That’s what we need to instil in our children and, just as importantly, develop in ourselves. 

Thanks to all those who take part in #PrimaryRocks each Monday from 8pm on Twitter. 
@gazneedle