Resilience!
A Guide for Educators

Michael E, Bernard, Ph.D.
Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne
Founder and Executive Director, You Can Do It! Education

Working as a teacher, special educator or administrator, there are times when negative, adverse events at work (and home) can lead you to experience a range of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety or feeling down. While these negative emotions are normal and understandable, when you become extremely angry or highly anxious, or feel very down, not only is your overall social-emotional well-being impaired, but your ability to think clearly, solve problems, and continue to perform at a high level of professional effectiveness is greatly reduced.

A key personal capability we all need when the going gets tough is "emotional resilience". No matter how technically skilled you are in your job (e.g. classroom management, in the design and presentation of lessons, in using ongoing performance feedback of students to guide your instruction, managing budgets, strategic planning) without emotional resilience, the ability to deliver your abundant professional skills is compromised.

Emotional Resilience means... being aware of your negative emotions (anxiety, anger, down) when something adverse happens, being able to prevent yourself from getting extremely upset, or when you are very upset and knowing what to do to calm down and to feel better. It also means being able to control your behaviour when you get extremely upset. By being able to maintain control of your negative emotions, emotional resilience helps you to "bounce back" from adversity and, specifically, to continue to work towards your goal of being successful and happy.

Emotional resilience as a personal capability involves your use of a variety of ways to think and different coping skills that: 1. help you regulate the intensity of your emotional response to adverse events in your life, and 2. help you to eliminate the adversity. Some ways of thinking and coping skills are emotion-focused (e.g. not blowing things out of proportion, not taking things personally, switching from negative to positive thoughts, relaxation, finding someone to talk to) and focus on ways you can you can calm down and be in control of your emotions when the adversity cannot be so readily eliminated from your life (e.g. difficult behaviour of some people). Other ways of thinking and coping skills are problem-focused and involve you using your personal strengths (e.g. asserting yourself, managing your time, steps to solving an interpersonal problem) to make the problem go away (e.g. oppositional student, someone asking you to join another committee).

Emotional resilience is not about eliminating emotions totally. It is about empowering you so that you feel you have some control over your emotional response to adverse situations.

My own recent research throughout Australia, England and the United States into the personal capabilities of educators has yielded some interesting findings. While educators as a group tend to have strong getting along capabilities, are extremely persistent, and are generally organized, they indicate that they need to develop their confidence and emotional resilience.

This brief article provides some ideas that have helped countless teachers, special educators and administrators maintain their calmness and emotional control in the face of the unrelenting and, oftentimes, highly adverse events that make up the territory of schools.

Please download the PDF file for the complete article.