Resilience and self-confidence are not one-time learning experiences. We have been taught about it for ages. And, students require frequent and varied opportunities to feel empowered, survive discomfort and gain independence’.
Educators may not be able to monitor the student's burden; the least they can do is allow students to talk about it at the door, lighten the load and strengthen their strength to transport it more easily.
In this article, let us learn about resilience and self-confidence and how can we build the same in students.
What is Resilience?
As defined, resilience is the capacity to adapt well when faced with adversity or stress. Resilience helps students stave off the potential adverse psychological effects of challenging experiences. Resilience goes beyond persistence despite the difficulty. Resilient students positively interpret school or social challenges (increasing efforts, developing new strategies or practising conflict resolution).
Many key capabilities are associated with resiliency, including:
- • Emotional regulation (ability to stay calm and express feelings to improve the situation)
- • impulse control (making a conscious choice to act on a desire to act and the ability to delay gratification and perseverance)
- • Causal analysis (problem analysis and accurate causation)
- • Empathy (understanding of someone else's feelings and needs)
- • Realistic optimism (remain positive without negating reality)
- • Self-efficacy (confidence in problem resolution and stress management)
- • SeekingOpportunity (the ability to take new opportunities and reach out to others)
What is Self-Confidence?
Self-confidence is an attitude concerning your skills and capacities. It means you accept and trust yourself and have a sense of control in your life. You are familiar with your strengths and weaknesses and have a positive outlook on yourself. You set realistic expectations and objectives, communicate confidently and can face criticism.
On the other hand, low self-confidence may make one feel full of doubt, passive or submissive, or find it hard to trust others. They may feel inferior, unloved, or sensitive to criticism. Self-confidence may depend on the circumstances. For example, they may feel very confident in specific fields, such as academia, but lack confidence in others, such as relationships. Having high or low self-confidence is seldom linked to our natural abilities, mainly based on our perceptions. Perceptions are the way of thinking about oneself, and such thoughts can be imperfect. Low self-confidence might stem from different experiences, such as growing up in an unsupportive and critical environment, being separated from your friends or family for the first time, judging yourself too harshly, or being afraid of failure. People who have little confidence in themselves often have misconceptions.
How do good teachers build resilience and confidence in students? We have enlisted some tips recommended by experts around the globe:
Create Safe and Supportive Learning Environments
To help build Resilience and Self-confidence in children, it is essential to develop a supportive learning environment where learners feel safe and supported. Please encourage them to try new things, and emphasize the growth and learning opportunities they are presented with when they commit a mistake or experience failure.
Students feel that the result will not negatively affect them; they are more likely to try something new and more difficult in the classroom. Moreover, learning from mistakes and challenges in a place where they feel supported and encouraged will strengthen their confidence and resilience.
Celebrate Student's Progress
It is essential to instil a belief that what matter's the most is their progress, not success.
Educators need to build a positive mindset and a willingness to grow in students. It can be done only by providing open feedback to students that focuses on their effort rather than the outcome.
Teachers also need to encourage learners to set goals for themselves that provide challenges and stimulation. Celebrate their progress every time they overcome a challenge or move a step ahead in achieving their goal. This could focus on something academic or relate to a student's challenging area. You can help them celebrate the little milestones along the way by frequent communication with their parents to inform them of their child's progress, rather than waiting for the time to report.
Have them Set a Goal and Reflect Upon Them
A positive mentality, a desire to grow, and learning from failures contribute to Building Resilience. Encouraging learners to set their goals and make time for reflection helps maintain focus and create momentum in times of growth and change. Teachers can also break down situations, issues or even assessments into smaller, less intimidating chunks and make it easier for students to maintain positive mindsets. They are less likely to be discouraged by setbacks. Designing environments where students feel confident to discuss what they want to achieve and what strategies they are planning to do is vital in helping them build resilience.
Build a Sense of Belonging in the School Community
As per research, a great way to build resilience in learners is to feel included in the school community. It is observed that when learners feel that what they are doing or providing is more critical, they are more likely to overcome difficulties and remain optimistic about the result. Therefore, teachers should encourage and engage them with the school and community beyond their social groups by including them in school events as volunteers, mentors of younger students, or inter or intra school functions. It helps instil in them a belief that their involvement can positively affect others and themselves.
Empower Students with Responsibilities
Children can do things independently and are held responsible for tasks and processes; it naturally builds self-confidence. It provides a sense of control that we all need during these uncertain times.
To do so, make students in charge of a few tasks or activities, including attendance and lunch count, labelled services, and class lists for students to turn in work and cross off their names. This would encourage them to step up and take responsibility. It is recommended to rotate class responsibilities frequently and utilize group roles for the most significant number of opportunities. This would also help teachers know the students, observe class dynamics, and prepare assignments to strengthen the classroom team.
Embrace unstructured time and free play
Play is critical for a child's development; it helps provide consistent opportunities for students to connect and socialize. To build resilience and self-confidence in students, teachers need to give students free play and embrace unstructured timing. They can also provide regular recess; it is most beneficial when adults act as lifeguards, rather than organizing games, enforcing rules, and intervening in every disagreement. Let children create their activities, have and solve conflicts and learn to negotiate with others to keep the fun happening.
Motivate And Praise Students
Whether an adult or young children who are regularly praised and motivated for putting in their efforts and performance either at home or in classrooms are believed to have a high level of self-confidence and inspires students to try harder, achieve more and improve. At the same time, those frequently criticized and scorned have little self-esteem and are more likely to drop out quickly and get less in their lives. Thus, teachers should appreciate and motivate students to take steps even if they commit mistakes or fear failure.
They should also be offered the right opportunity to learn and master new skills. For instance, motivating them to make their sandwich, wear shoes, dress up etc., all assist them in achieving confidence, a sense of accomplishment and making them feel successful. The primary goals will set them up to get bigger and more complex goals because they get older.
Teach Communicate Skills
Communication is the key and most crucial skill that each individual must have in their life. It also helps boost self-confidence and self-esteem in students. Teachers must teach the learners to know how to communicate. It is essential to make students understand the communication process as it assists them in feeling more secure and confident. Also, they are likely to share their issues with colleagues and teachers, and while doing so, the teachers and parents can understand the depth of the problem and help resolve it together.
Help Students Establish Self-Discipline
Students having trouble developing self-discipline have more difficulty developing resilience, self-esteem, and confidence. Individuals with these difficulties act before thinking and often express disagreement about limits, structure and rules. To broaden their understanding of the requirement for regulations and motivation to follow them comprise students in establishing the classroom rules, teachers can build students' self-confidence through activities like reading. It builds confidence when handling books and encourages them to be aware and curious about print. Early literacy skills are fundamental for toddlers, helping them, later on, to learn how to read at school.
Write and talk about human resilience and setbacks.
Allowing students to write and talk about resilience helps build students' confidence and resilience. The teacher can introduce students to writing assignments that focus on personal growth or growth supporter or pillar of strength, or any situation they had trouble in and how they overcame this challenge. It would help hone their writing skills and help overcome their problems and build resilience and self-confidence.
Recognize Emotions
Recognizing and labelling certain emotions help students become self-aware and learn to manage their emotional states effectively. When they know to identify and name feelings, they are better prepared to make rational decisions and manage disorienting or disruptive emotions in their lives, which are critical elements of resilience.
Teachers can practice quick daily emotional check-ins in the classroom or teach students the words that can describe their emotions—with varying degrees of complexity based on grade level or make a chart of emotions and categorize them and their responses to the feelings. This would help identify their emotional triggers and begin planning to respond with good self-management strategies.
Teach the importance of health and wellbeing
In school, teachers seldom talk about health and wellbeing. When it comes to teaching students about resilience, one cannot oversee that resilience is psychological and physical. To make students feel strong and well prepared for life's challenges, they need to be physically sound. An excellent physical condition is possible only if there are enough hours during the night, regular exercise, healthy eating habits, and plenty of water.
A great way to teach students about their health and wellbeing is by discussing healthy habits. Teachers can ask students to name themselves along with one healthy habit and any suggestion they have.
Once the list is complete, instruct students to pick any healthy habits, try a week and reflect on how they impacted them.
Develop problem-solving skills
Problem-solving skills are fundamental to child development as they help build confident and competent children. It is found that students who learn to quickly find solutions to problems are more likely to deal with issues in the future effortlessly.
When students are asked to deal with issues by themselves or in groups, they learn to deal with challenges. As a result, they understand how to tackle problems, calculate risks and think logically. That, in turn, helps to make them more resilient.
To introduce kids to problem-solving skills, ask them about the real-life situation and how they solved them. Write it on the board. Following this, ask students to brainstorm the best ways to solve the problem and experiment with the proposed strategies. This can help resolve the issue, but it will also help teach your students how to deal with difficult situations.
Practise gratitude
Being grateful is more than saying thank you. This technique helps students to remember what is good about their lives. Whether they are friends, family members or their health, there is always something grateful. This activity will not only generate optimism but also eliminate negativity.
In addition, the practice of gratitude brings the power to raise a person's physical and mental health, stimulate happiness, improve sleep and help learners feel more connected to others. All these elements can help them become happier, healthier and more resilient.
Also, teachers may ask students to express their thankfulness, jot it down and have students review and discuss it. Ask them what it feels like to see this information. Do they feel more positive or driven?
Notice how this changes their attitude and reminds them that they can use this tool at all times when they feel negative.
What strategies do you follow? Let us know in the comments.
