Notes on Resilience

What can we do to make our students more resilient?
-Brofenbrenner's Ecosystems help us understand it as how inner ecosystems are able to react to outer layers (school, family, peers, as well as the wider community, media, society and culture).
-Problem solving skills, autonomy, social competence and sense of purpose and failure (Morrison, 1997) are the key characteristics of a resilient child.

I believe students in our school are fortunate to have great support overall - in school, at home and in the community. Hearing about many of the problems local students face made me reflect on just how fortunate our students are.

Does their sheltered upbringing make them less resilient? Two students in my class cried yesterday, one from a snide remark from another student, the other from an overblown teacher reaction, yet both were able to recover quickly and seemed to have forgotten any more by the end of the day.

Our students don't face the same challenges many HK students face (exams, parental pressure, societal pressure), but does it make them more resilient? With over 500,000 families in HK living below the poverty line, perhaps the challenges my students face pale in comparison. Are they spoilt?