Resiliency is what we all hope that our students can learn and develop so that they can overcome their personal adversities and achieve quality of life throughout their lifespan, beginning in the moment that they are living in right now.
We know, as educators, that childhood experiences have been scientifically proven to determine the expression of genes in many important organs especially the brain. Both positive influences like rich learning environment and negative experiences like malnutrition change the chemistry that encodes genes in our brain cells.
Because we know this, it is also important to realize that resilience to stress, adversity, and change depends on our inner resources. And while we do not have much control over circumstances that determine our personality, IQ or availability of support, we can develop coping strategies and we can teach these strategies to our students. This workshop will detail coping strategies that we can embed in our daily work with students so that they can confront stress in healthy ways. Because true resilience fosters wellbeing.