Resilience

When a young child is growing up, he or she is frequently told to get up and brush it off...to make the most of a bad situation, just keep moving. Resilience. I have been told by many people that I am a very resilient, I bounce back easily and have very little trouble adjusting to new situations. I learned, during my time at Luther, that this is an admirable quality for students to have, that we should instill this in our youth. for the most part, I feel that this is true...kids need to learn how to take what life throws at them and make the best of it, but sometimes I think that we are training kids to become hardened, overly independent people.

The students that I work with have had their share of bad luck. They face tons of different situations including addiction, homelessness, abuse and poverty and most of them overcome it on a daily basis. Unfortunately, these kids have learned that they can only depend on themselves, that they have to be resilient on their own.

Some of my high school students are the most fiercely independent people I have ever met, which makes it difficult to teach them how to depend on people. These kids grow up thinking that they are the only people who can change their lives, which is what educators and other adults have taught them over the years. However, even though kids do need the ability to face their demons, they also need to learn how to ask for help. It is our responsibility to teach them that they can work together with other people, that there are services out there to help them.

How can we teach them that there are resources to assist them without teaching them to take advantage of those very systems...these are all very loaded questions and they require some serious thought as to their answers, answers that I don't have and that frustrates me. I want to be able to teach my students to become valuable members of society and realize that they are worth more than just a welfare check or punching bag. I want them to know that they can depend on each other for support, and that they don't, and shouldn't, have to go through life alone.