Resilience as an Adolescent

1. Resilience as an Adolescent How is resiliency taught in WA schools?

2. How is Resiliency currently addressed in school curriculum? How does resiliency link to the National Curriculum?Resiliency links strongly to personal, social and community health. This concept teaches students to practise skills to help deal with challenging or unsafe situations. How is resiliency taught in schools? Through positive role modelling by teachers, parents and peers. Specific concepts are taught through classroom activities and practical implementation. What resources are commonly used in schools? Important resources used by many schools when teaching about resilience include, SDERA; used to help plan and implement resilience and drug education programs. This provides effective teaching ideas and management strategies proven to be effective within adolescent children. My TV; emphasises resilience by addressing skills including, decision-making, self-talk and finding information. REDI for Parents; provides guidelines and tools to help strengthen relationships between schools and families Resilience is a growing topic in schools all over West Australia. Studies have shown that the lack of effective coping strategies from an adverse experience can lead to elicit drug use, excessive drinking (alcohol), violence and depression (Stark, 2014). When is resilience taught in schools? Resilience is taught from early years in primary school, right up until the final years of high school. This is a concept that is constantly reinforced in schools (in all subject areas) i.e. physical education: students are encouraged to motivate one another and show team spirit; to positively reassure other teammates of their efforts and areas of strength.

3. How ‘Enhancing Resilience as an Adolescent’ fits into the HPE Learning Area. • Enhancing resilience as an adolescent connects to the ‘Wellness’ context strand of the scope and sequence. This area of HPE focusses primarily on relationships and resilience in young adolescent children. As outlined in the scope and sequence chart (scope and sequence outline.doc), enhancing resilience as an adolescent links in with growth and development, communicating with others, understanding and managing emotions. Teaching resilience to adolescent students promotes HPE related behaviors, including: • Positive thinking towards self and others • Planning ahead strategies (goal setting) • Encouragement • Leadership • Bouncing back – coping with loss or disappointment

4. ACARA Context and Elaborations.

5. What are some of the challenges/major debates around resilience? • Many people, including family and friends have different methods of dealing with adverse situations (negative and positive). • Helicopter parenting - Children may not be faced with adverse situations at home (bubble wrapped), as they are in real life. • Primary schools – Don’t always provide students with relevant situations to prepare them for events they may face in the future i.e. certificates for all students, ribbons for every child. • Auskick – Games not being scored (no winners/losers). Follow the debate at http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/2188944/auskick-ban-on-scores-just-darn-right-stupidity-poll/.

6. How can teachers construct creative classroom lessons to focus on ‘resilience as an adolescent’.’. Teachers need to relate their content to real life scenarios where students are able to implement discussed strategies into real world situations. Furthermore, the activities and information presented must be relevant to the target audience. Effective classroom activities to promote resilience to year nine students may include – • Video or images presenting commonly seen adverse situations students may be faced with each day. • Role play: Encouraging students to practice strategies learnt in class; allowing students to develop resiliency skills in a safe environment. • Interviews: Allowing students to pose important questions and interpret responses to create discussion about effective ways to be resilient. • Identifying appropriate resolutions/reactions: Creating scenarios (adverse situations) and allowing students to come up with their own ways of coping/dealing with it. • Debate: Create scenarios where students are either encouraged to express or withhold emotions. Look for reasoning behind students responses. • Survey: By surveying peers or teachers, students are able to view the commonalities and differences people have towards resilience. They can also further research the topic to find which strategies prove to be more effective in different situations

7. Support for teachers presenting resiliency strategies to young adolescents. • It is important to connect with evidence-based research when teaching about the importance of resilience to young adolescents. Below are some important websites to be considered when discussing resilience. • http://promising.futureswithoutviolence.org/ • This website provides a complete overview of the difficult conditions children are faced with within domestic violent households. This suggests a number of strategies to help cope with these adverse situations and ways to implement these strategies. Furthermore, this provides other community resources to help adolescent children cope with such conditions. • http://www.cdc.gov/ace/index.htm • The adverse childhood experience website shows the ongoing effects of adverse situations on children and young adolescents. While it does not outline specific coping strategies to deal with these situations, it does identify the long term effects of not coping with such events. • C:\Users\31366008\Desktop\resilience-coping strategies.pdf • This scholarly article shows a US study performed on 297 adolescent teenagers outlining the effectiveness on the various coping strategies mentioned. It helps us to understand the most effective forms of resiliency and allows teachers to teach a wide spectrum of strategies while honing in on the proven effective strategies. Supporting documents to elaborate on proven strategies to help deal with domestic violence. http://promising.futureswithoutviolence.org/files/2013/08/16-Trauma-Informed-Evidence-Based-Recommendations-For-Advocates.pdf The adverse childhood experience study: The long term effects of difficult situations on young adolescents. C:\Users\31366008\Desktop\ACES.pdf • http://resilientyouth.org.au/ • This website provides ideas for building resilience in young adolescents , parents and teachers. This is an essential resource for anyone dealing with or know of someone dealing with adverse situations. This provides great ideas for teaching resilience and support agencies in the community. Contacts: Child and adolescent mental health service (Rockingham) – 9531 8080 Positive Pieces – 1300 769 919 Beyond Blue – 1300 224 636 8 tips for reaching out to parents: This article provides teacher strategies to help connect with parents and families which can assist linking school activities with the home environment. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-reaching-out-to-parents-david-cutler?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=blog-reaching-out-to-parents-link

8. References ACARA (2007). K - 10 Scope and Sequence: Early Adolescence, Health and Physical Education. D. o. E. a. T. W. Australia: 23. Australia, E. S. (2013). "The National Australian Curriculum." 2013, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/. Booker, C. (2014). Auskick ban on scores, just 'darn right stupidity'. The Border Mail. Sunday April 27, 2014. Cutler, D. (2014). 8 Tips for Reaching Out to Parents, Edutopia. 2014. DeBoard-Lucas, R., et al. (2013) 16 Trauma-Informed, Evidence-Based Recommendations for Advocates Working with Children Exposed to Inimate Partner Violence. Dumont, M. and M. A. Provast (1999). "Resilience in Adolescents: Protective Role of Social Support, Coping Strategies, Self-Esteem, and Social Activities on Experience of Stress and Depression." Journal of Youth and Adolescent Vol. 28(No. 3): 21. Fuller, A. (2012 - 2014). "Resilient Youth Australia." Retrieved 27/04/2014, 2014, from http://resilientyouth.org.au/. Futures, P. (2012). "Best Practices for Serving Children, Youth, and Parents Experiencing Domestic Violence." Retrieved 27/04/2014, 2014, from http://promising.futureswithoutviolence.org/ Prevention, C. f. D. C. a. (2014). "Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Studey." Retrieved 27/04/2014, 2014, from http://www.cdc.gov/ace/index.htm. SDERA (2014). "School Drug Education & Road Aware." Challenges and Choices Years 7 to 10 Overview. Retrieved 27/04/2014, 2014, from http://www.sdera.org.au/index.php/challenges/grades-7-10. Vincent J. Felitti, M., FACP, Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, Dale Nordenberg, MD, David F. Williamson, MS, PhD, and M. Alison M. Spitz, MPH, Valerie Edwards, BA, Mary P. Koss, PhD, James S. Marks, MD, MPH (1998). "Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults." American Journal of Preventive Medicine 14(4): 14.