Interventions and Strategies for Building Resiliency in Middle School Students

Understanding Your Students

For middle school students that are facing extraordinary circumstances, the strengthening of resiliency is essential. A foundation for building resiliency lies in helping students to feel a sense of control over their lives. Although students exercise limited autonomy over their lives, they are in control of how they react to situations. School counselors and other staff can help students to establish a sense of control through teaching self-regulation, coping skills, recognizing strengths, building self-esteem and setting goals. Learning how to react effectively can lead to the ability to cope with trauma resiliently.

Establishing Self-Regulation and Coping Skills

Students facing difficult circumstances are in desperate need of self-regulation and coping skills, yet often lack them. In order to cope, many at-risk students have learned to sooth themselves and have developed self-soothing strategies. These responses may include constriction, aggressive behavior, self-harm, drinking or overeating (Blaustein, 2010). A goal of school counselors is to help students to develop healthier self-regulation skills.

In teaching students students to self-regulate, school counselors can pay attention to how the student reacts to stressful situations. For instance, a student that moves around when he is stressed may benefit from taking a walk. A student that clenches her fists may benefit from the use of a stress ball (Blaustein, 2010). Students can also benefit greatly from learning mindfulness techniques. When they are stressed, do they feel their shoulders tense up, hands in fists, or have shortness of breath? When this happens, they can learn to make the conscious decision to calm down and relax their muscles, and take deep breaths from their stomachs (Siegel, 2012).

An excellent intervention to promote self-regulation in middle school students is to create a feelings scrapbook. For each page, an emotion is listed. Then under each emotion, strategies for coping when the student is faced with strong emotions can be listed. For the emotion, worry, for instance, a list of five distractions and a positive affirmation to remember may be useful for students. The page for fear could include a picture of a safe place or a safe person (Blaustein, 2010). This intervention can be done within a class, group or individual setting.

Recognizing Strengths

So many students that face trauma have been taught to accept failures, to give up easily and to view criticism as intentionally hurtful. According to Dweck (2006), these students are stuck in a fixed mindset. As school counselors, we can help them to change this to a growth mindset. This can be done through teaching them to change negative self-talk, from can’t to can. We can encourage them to be persistent in the face of challenges, rather than becoming defensive and give up easily. We can teach them to take criticism as useful feedback and to celebrate the successes of others rather than compare one’s self to others (Dweck, 2006). Students benefit when counselors recognize and point out their strengths. This is especially true for students who are used to having their flaws pointed out to them by teachers, parents and others. 

Building Self-Esteem

Once students realize their own self worth and gain self-esteem, they can change from a stagnant view of self to one without limits. To promote self-esteem counselors can create pride walls in their offices.  In this intervention, students are encouraged to add to the wall things they are proud of, such as accomplishments or attributes, while keeping them anonymous (Blaustein, 2010). This intervention could follow counseling sessions.

Setting Goals

According to a school counselor, the best way to help children to gain resilience is to help them to set goals. For example, a student was having difficulty getting along with other students and had many challenges at home. Together with the student, the counselor worked to develop a ten-year plan. They talked about going to college and what she needed to do to get there. This helped her to see through the trauma she was currently facing and to have something to look forward to. It also helped her to improve her grades, as she could understand the long-term effects of doing well in school. Setting goals can help students to not only gain resiliency, but also feelings of self worth.

School counselors can play a central role in building resiliency by teaching skills to manage life’s struggles effectively. Building self-esteem and recognizing strengths can help students to see their hidden potential and value their self worth. Most students don’t face just one instance of trauma and a foundation of skills and strengths can translate to a variety of scenarios. The coping skills learned in middle school can be used throughout their entire lives. In addition, setting goals can help students to see past trauma. While there are some circumstances we can’t control, we can control how we respond and react to them. Once students realize this, they are on the path to resiliency.

References

Blaustein, M. & Kinniburgh, K. (2010). Treating Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents:   How to Foster Resilience through Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency. The      Guildford Press: New York.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House: New York.

Koehler, N., & Seger, V. (2005). Response Ability Pathways: A Curriculum for     Connecting. Reclaiming Children & Youth, 14(2), 121-123. Retrieved from       http://proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t  rue&db=a9h&AN=17914239&site=ehost-live

Morrow, D. H., & And, O. (1987). Pre-Vocational Immersion as Risk Intervention in a     Mainstream Setting: A Preliminary Evaluation of Project OASES. Retrieved from http://proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=t  rue&db=eric&AN=ED324341&site=ehost-live

Seigel, D. (2012). The whole brain child. Bantam Books: New York.

Image Sources

http://www.writingforward.com/writing-resources/journal-writing-tools-and-resources

https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/108787104/8x10-what-happens-to-you-print?utm_source#=Pinterest&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share

http://www.bestpracticescenter.org/blog/the-story-behind-the-i-am-wall

http://rabbitfoodformybunnyteeth.com/motivational-wallpapers-05/

Promoting Resiliency in School

At risk students, or any students for that matter, have two choices when faced with an obstacle: they can see the mountain in their way and sit at the bottom or they can look at the mountain, climb the mountain, and summit the mountain. It is inspiring to witness students overcome what could or should be insurmountable obstacles and grow into healthy, smart and fully functioning members of society. Resiliency is what makes those students climb the mountain, no matter how big or small, with the goal of reaching the top. Promoting and teaching resiliency is an important function of any school and should be a school wide effort. In order to give our students their best chance of overcoming any obstacle they may find in their way we need to provide them with the tools and the resilience to do so. This ability to succeed despite adversity stems from resilience, or coping effectively with difficulties that might otherwise lead to anxiety, depression, withdrawal, physical symptoms, or poor achievement. (Harvey, 2007)

The Resilient Student

 Positive attitudes that promote resiliency include encouraging oneself to try, being determined to persevere until success is attained, applying a problem solving approach to difficult situations, and fostering feelings of hardiness. (Harvey, 2007) Optimism and determination are important attributes of a resilient student. These attributes allow the student to think through individual tasks and achieve success. A resilient student tends to have high self-esteem, thick skin and sense of humor, which is why they are not easily discouraged by failure when they are learning a new skill. 

The Resilient School

According to Bonnie Bennard (1991), many studies during the past 10 years have clearly documented the school’s ability to help students overcome the effects of poverty, abuse, crime and other environmental threats. Overcoming outside influences as well as any other situations that students may be faced with will make them stronger, the skills needed to overcome need to be taught and maintained in the school environment. This begins with a caring and supportive staff of people that are able to clearly demonstrate care and support for the student. This environment is composed of positive role models, student support networks, opportunities for social support; close relationships among students and a clear message that people at the school sincerely care for them. (Fox, 1994) If counselors and teachers can make connections with students who need the extra help or that extra push to succeed we would see more students climbing the mountain rather than sitting at the base looking at the top.

Building a resilient student body is important to building a successful school. As educators we need to promote resiliency as well as teach the skills needed to give students the ability to reach their goals and climb the mountains they may find before them.

References:

Bennard, Bonnie. (1991). Fostering Reiliency in Kids: Protective Factors in Family, School, and Community. Portland, Oregon: Northwest Educational Laboratory.

Fox, D. S. (1994). Promoting Resiliency in Students. Trust for Educational Leadership, 24(3), 34-40.

Harvey, V. S. (2007). Raising Resiliency Schoolwide. Education Digest, 72(7), 33-39.

Resiliency in Schools

Resiliency is thought of as a strong and tough characteristic. Someone with resiliency demonstrates the capacity to recover and rise from difficulties they have faced.  

• Do young adolescents have the capability to be resilient?  

• Can students overcome hardships with toughness to change, cope, and grow?  

•  What if those hardships are living in poverty, having endured sexual abuse, or the death of a parent? 

With support from caring adults who promote resiliency, lives of teenagers can be dramatically influenced to overcome their circumstances and use their experiences to succeed. School counselors have knowledge, skills, and expertise to provide support to help make students successful.  Together with teachers, counselors can provide interventions in school to increase student resiliency.

School counselors play a crucial role in identifying students who have been negatively impacted by life experiences and promoting and teaching resiliency.  Students can be empowered when taught resiliency skills to help stabilize their lives no matter what adversity they have faced or will see in their life.  Counselors have a special position to help students build a toughness and an ability to bounce back and be even stronger than before with a little guidance and a positive school community.

Promoting Resiliency in a School Counseling Program

Resiliency can be defined as, “The set of attributes an individual possess which enables him/her to bounce back from adversity, frustration, and/or misfortune” (Janas, 2002 & Sagor, 1996). Resilient students are viewed as social, optimistic, cooperative, inquisitive, attentive, helpful, punctual, and on task (Sagor, 1996). He or she is empathetic, determined, hopeful, persistent, autonomous, and possess a sense of humor, effective communication skills, and good problem solving skills (Bernard, 1993). These are the character traits that allow some students to overcome adversity and continue to succeed in his/her life. 


Examples of strategies include: 

• Evaluate all students based on character strengths and apply the information to provide classroom guidance lessons, individual counseling, and to form counseling groups. A strength-based approach has been shown to accentuate character strengths which, in turn, promotes resiliency among students. There are several questionnaires that can be administered to students, which helps discover character traits. Building resiliency through classroom guidance lessons on character strengths, is effective and reaches many students at one time.

• Collaborate with families, school staff, and the community to provide a strength-based approach to empowering students. When a school counselor collaborates with student’s families, school staff, and the community, it provides important opportunities to enrich a student’s character traits and enhance resiliency. Some examples of collaboration may be: classroom guidance lessons based on student’s specific needs; peer mediation and peer counseling; peer mentoring; a school wide bullying prevention program; group counseling with student’s and/or families; children and staff birthday celebrations; mentor-ships with individuals in the community; and various clubs and enrichment programs based on student’s interests and needs. Collaborating with families, school staff, and the community, will not only build resiliency for a student in the school setting, it will also assist him/her in the application of resiliency in other areas of his/her life.

• Shift from a deficit-focused to a strengths-based and solution-focused approach to advocate for all students. School counselors are leaders in the school. If we build on student’s strengths and advocate for all students, the school staff will follow. By acknowledging a student for his/her positive attributes, and not by his/her negative attributes, it will allow school staff to view him/her differently. A teacher may express frustration with a student for constantly talking out of turn in class. From a strength-base focused perspective, a school counselor may offer a suggestion such as, “I bet that is very frustrating. It sounds like that student has some amazing ideas that he/she is wanting to share with the class? Could we brainstorm some ways for him/her to express his/herself without disrupting class?” By acknowledging the teacher’s frustration and then refocusing his/her deficit in the classroom to a strength of the student, it will encourage the teacher to view the student as a strength instead of a deficit to the classroom.

The continuing challenge for school counselors is to reach all students and provide them with the tools they need to succeed academically, socially, emotionally, and in their careers. By promoting student’s character strengths, collaborating with families, school staff, and the community, shifting from a deficit-reduction to a strength-based approach, and continuing to educate ourselves, we can build resiliency among students and help them achieve their goals!

References: 
Bernard, B.  (1993). Fostering Resiliency in Kids.  Educational Leadership, 51(3), 44-48.
Janas, M.  (2002). Build Resiliency.  Intervention in School & Clinic, 38(2), 117-121.
Sagor, R.  (1996). Building Resiliency in Students.  Educational Leadership, 54(1), 38-43.