Much as it upsets me as a lifelong Chelsea
fan, you can bet that by the time you read this Manchester United
will be back to winning ways!
I’m sure everyone enjoyed the Mancunian wit
that suggested a new Manchester United helpline number – 0161
616161 after their thrashing by neighbours Manchester
City.
No-one is immune to off-days, it is developing
the resilience to come back that is the mark of effective people,
effective organisations, effective communities.
The American Psychological Association defines
resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of
adversity, trauma, tragedy or stress. The football manager
Ian Dowie described it more succinctly as
“bouncebackability”! A stress-free, adversity-free life
doesn’t exist so resilience is a vital life skill.
The challenge for educators is to work out how
to help people develop resilience. Like most skills
resilience can improve through practise, and sometimes that means
we need to expose students deliberately to difficult situations and
put them under stress to perform, whether it be a dance show in
front of an audience of 700, a stretching assignment, or a sports
event against a much better team. Of course it has to be done
in a controlled and measured way, supervised by professional
teachers.
Resilience is best developed by ensuring
students have caring and supportive relationships, are helped to
make realistic plans and carry them out, are trained in
problem-solving, taught to manage strong feelings, and encouraged
to develop a positive view of themselves (self-confidence, not
over-confidence).
At Bedford College our first value is student
focus and our third is respect. This ensures staff care for
and support our students. We allocate more time than most
colleges to tutorials which help students to plan their way through
the course. Most vocational courses are all about problem
solving – can you maintain an aeroplane so it gets to its
destination? Can you design something so it sells? Can you make
food people will pay to eat? Can you make someone feel a million
dollars using just a comb and a pair of
scissors?
Managing your feelings and developing
self-confidence is also on our menu but is tackled through a
structured approach to student behaviour - clear rules, clear
boundaries, fair treatment. Self-confidence we instil by
giving clear, constructive feedback so students get to know their
strengths and where they need to improve.
Sometimes it means telling students straight
something they’d rather not hear (the Simon Cowell manoeuvre) – I
should have added our fourth value is honesty, not niceness!
Resilient communities require resilient
people. Hopefully we are doing our bit to help make Bedford
even more resilient, ready to exploit the economic upturn when it
arrives.
If you keep trying to succeed you haven’t
failed, it’s when you give up trying it becomes failure.