Bonnie Benard: Keynote at 2009 Urban Sites Network Conference
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What’s Resilience Got To What’s Resilience Got To Do With It? Do With It? Helping Our Students See Helping Our Students See Their Lives in New Ways Their Lives in New Ways National Writing Project Urban Sites Network Conference Louisville, KY April 25, 2009 Bonnie Benard WestEd - Oakland, CA [email protected]
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Bonnie Benard discusses the role that schools and communities play in supporting the biological drive for normal human development and triumphing over adversity: resiliency. Benard works to help schools and communities create supportive environments that nurture adolescents' healthy development and life success. Benard has been a senior program associate at WestEd for twenty-five years. Over the past fifteen years, she has been promoting resiliency through research and has directly affected national policy through her input to the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools and to the No Child Left Behind Act.
Transcript of Bonnie Benard: Keynote at 2009 Urban Sites Network Conference
What’s Resilience Got To Do What’s Resilience Got To Do With It? With It?
Helping Our Students See Helping Our Students See Their Lives in New WaysTheir Lives in New Ways
National Writing ProjectUrban Sites Network Conference
Louisville, KYApril 25, 2009
Bonnie Benard WestEd - Oakland, [email protected]
Healthy Development of Healthy Development of the Whole Childthe Whole Child
If stakeholders believe schools are responsible for developing the whole child, what needs to change?
If decisions about programs started with “What works for the child?” how would resources - time, space, and human - be arrayed to ensure each child’s success?
What would happen if community resources were arrayed in support of children reaching their potential as young adults?
If students were truly at the center of the system, what could be achieved?
Gene CarterASCD Commission on the Whole Child,
2006
Paradigms for Prevention & Paradigms for Prevention & EducationEducation
(Many research/programmatic approaches focus on ‘at-riskness’)(Many research/programmatic approaches focus on ‘at-riskness’) Risk
Unit of Change Individual
Focus Deficits
Goal Problem prevention
Attitude toward youth Youth-as-Problems
Attitude toward diversity Eurocentric
Attitude toward learning Mechanistic
Strategies emphasize Program and content
Locus of control External
Philosophy Control
Whose needs are met? Bureaucracies
Bonnie Benard
Resilience ResearchResilience Research(Take a different approach; look instead at…)(Take a different approach; look instead at…)
How children and youth have transformed risk and adversity into healthy development and life success.
ResilienceResilience
The transformative power we have The transformative power we have to see ourselves, our lives, and to see ourselves, our lives, and
others in a new way.others in a new way.
Stories of Stories of Resilience…Resilience…
Major Messages from Major Messages from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
Most people do Most people do make it despite make it despite exposure to risk exposure to risk & adversity. & adversity.
##11
50 Years of Resilience 50 Years of Resilience Research Tells Us Research Tells Us
That:That:…When the focus is on supporting & empowering young people, over 70% of young people in the most challenging of life’s conditions not only survive but grow into thriving adults.
Findings from Findings from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
RISK OUTCOME“Our findings and those by other American and European investigators with a life-span perspective suggest that these buffers (protective factors) make a more profound impact on the life course of children who grow up under adverse conditions than do specific risk factors or stressful life events. They appear to transcend ethnic, social class, geographical and historical boundaries.”
BEHAVIOR CAPACITY“Most of all, they offer us a more optimistic outlook than the perspective that can be gleaned from the literature on the negative consequences of perinatal trauma, care-giving deficits, and chronic poverty. They provide us with a corrective lens--an awareness of the self-righting tendencies that move children toward normal adult development under all but the most persistent adverse circumstances.”
-Emmy Werner & Ruth Smith
Major Messages from Major Messages from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
All people have All people have a resilient a resilient nature. nature.
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Resilience is our own human Resilience is our own human capacity to transform & capacity to transform &
change.change.Robert J. Lifton
The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Transformation
Power
Safety Respect
MasteryMeaning
Love/Belonging
“Fundamental protective human adaptational systems” -Masten & Reed, 2002
Resilience as developmental wisdom in form of intrinsically motivated developmental needs.
Personal Resilience Personal Resilience Strengths: Strengths:
What Resilience Looks LikeWhat Resilience Looks LikeSOCIAL
Social Competence
- Responsiveness
- Communication
- Empathy/caring
- Compassion
- Altruism
- Forgiveness
EMOTIONAL
Autonomy- Positive Identity- Internal locus of control
- Self-efficacy/mastery- Initiative- Humor- Self-awareness- Resistance- Adaptive distancing
MORAL/SPIRITUAL
Sense of Purpose & Future
-A special interest/hobby- Goal directedness
-Imagination/creativity- Achievement motivation
- Educational aspiration- Persistence
- Optimism/hope- Faith
- Sense of Meaning
COGNITIVE
Problem-solving
- Planning
- Flexibility
- Critical thinking/insight
- Resourcefulness
Bonnie Benard Resiliency: What We Have Learned,
2004
Major Messages from Major Messages from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
People matter! People matter!
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You Matter!You Matter!
“Kids can walk around trouble if there is someplace to walk to, and someone to walk with.”
Tito in Urban Sanctuaries
(Milbrey, McLaughlin et. al)
Major Messages from Major Messages from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
It’s HOW we do It’s HOW we do what we do that what we do that counts. counts.
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Protective Factors Critical to Healthy Protective Factors Critical to Healthy Development & Life SuccessDevelopment & Life Success
CARINGCARINGRELATIONSHIPSRELATIONSHIPS
HIGH HIGH EXPECTATIONEXPECTATION
MESSAGESMESSAGESOPPORTUNITIES FOROPPORTUNITIES FOR
MEANINGFUL MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATIONPARTICIPATION
& CONTRIBUTION& CONTRIBUTION
Protective Factors Critical to Protective Factors Critical to Healthy Development & Life Healthy Development & Life
SuccessSuccessCARINGCARING
RELATIONSHIPSRELATIONSHIPS
“Being there”Models caring
Showing interest inGetting to know
CompassionListening/Dialogue
PatienceBasic trust/safe
HIGH HIGH EXPECTATIONSEXPECTATIONS
Belief in people’s
resilienceRespect & confirmation
Challenge & supportFirm guidance
Structure/ritualsStrengths-focused
Reframing “the story”Teaches personal
resilience
MEANINGFUL MEANINGFUL PARTICIPATIONPARTICIPATION
Safe placesInclusion
Responsibility/voice & choice
Participant-drivenExperiential skill
developmentCreative expression
ContributionCaring for others
Peer support
The Power of ListeningThe Power of Listening“I believe all any of us really wants is to feel truly and deeply heard, seen, acknowledged, and allowed to be ourselves… Maybe if we just practiced listening more, we’d better understand what a profound and empowering gift this simple act can be.”
Jon WilsonHope Magazine (#40), 2003
Power of Sharing Our Power of Sharing Our StoriesStories
“Hidden in all stories is the One story. The more we listen, the clearer that Story
becomes. Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us, is in
this story… In telling them, we are telling each other the human story. Stories that
touch us in this place of common humanness awaken us and weave us
together as a family once again.”
-Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, 1996
Turning Pain Into PowerTurning Pain Into Power
“By structuring a curriculum that allows room for students’ lives and by listening to their stories, I can locate the right
book, the right poem that turns pain into power.”
Linda Christensen, Rethinking Schools, Spring 2009
Major Messages from Major Messages from Resilience ResearchResilience Research
The process of The process of tapping resilience tapping resilience begins with the begins with the belief of belief of caregivers in caregivers in human resilience.human resilience.
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Reframing: Risk to Reframing: Risk to ResilienceResilience
DEFICITS STRENGTHS
Hyperactive __________
Impulsive __________
Stubborn __________
Willful __________
Tests Limits __________
Explosive __________
Defiant __________
Angry __________
Withdrawn __________
Aggressive __________
Victim __________
Our Resilience:Our Resilience:The Power We Have to See in a New The Power We Have to See in a New
WayWay
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms--to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
-Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Teaching Personal Teaching Personal Resilience Means Resilience Means
Challenging the 4 P’s*Challenging the 4 P’s*
Personal “This isn’t your fault.”
Pervasive “There are good things.”
Permanent “This too, shall pass.”
Prompt “Have patience and trust the process.”
*Adapted from Martin Seligman,Learned Optimism
Paradigms for Prevention & Paradigms for Prevention & EducationEducation
Risk Resilience
Unit of Change Individual Environment
Focus Deficits Assets and Strengths
Goal Problem prevention Healthy development
Attitude toward youth Youth-as-Problems Youth-as-Resource
Attitude toward diversity Eurocentric Multicultural
Attitude toward learning Mechanistic Constructivist
Strategies emphasize Program and content People and Place
Locus of control External Internal
Philosophy Control Connectedness
Whose needs are met? Bureaucracies Young peoples’
Bonnie Benard
Resilience in action…Resilience in action…
Staff NeedsSafety
Love/BelongingRespectPower
MasteryMeaning
Shared VisionBelief In
Human Resilience
…begins with a Professional Learning Community
Staff ResilienceEmpathyHumor
Problem SolvingSelf-Efficacy
Purpose/Hope
OPCRCR
OP
OPOP
OP
CRCR
CR
HEHE
HEHE
Staff Learning
Community
“A shared vision is a force in people’s hearts. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.”
- Peter Senge The Fifth Discipline, 1990
Turning to One AnotherTurning to One Another
“There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” - Margaret Wheatley, 2002
