Resilience can be defined as
The process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.
(APA. https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience)
When we discuss learning and metacognition with students, it is important to remember and remind that resilience can be practiced (it is the real growth mindset). And our job as educators is to cultivate students' learning process so that it supports the increase of their resilience. And helps them to rebuild their confidence and learning skills. Because this is exactly what learner agency is: our capacity to make choices about ourselves and our learning. Resilience. Adjusting.
I imagine that this might sound like yet another demand for already busy teachers
- but, please, hear me out:
Teaching will not be successful unless we help students to be resilient, like the tree in the picture. It doesn't have much soil, and it has lost some of it's needles, too. But it bends with the winds and tolerates the salty seawater. And grows. Not as fast as the other trees growing more inland with better soil. It grows on its own pace - like we all do, actually. For growth cannot be hurried.
Teaching and learning are TWO different processes in the classroom. What is taught is not necessarily learned. And sometimes what is NOT taught, is learned. We have called this with very many different names during the formal education era - hidden curriculum, or just the unofficial and unwritten rules (values, perspectives, norms, and so on...) that students learn at school. Often unintentionally, just as a part of the "school culture".
The more we understand the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and use Trauma-Informed Practices, the better we can support our students' resilience. To me, that is an essential part of being an educator.