Developing resilience

Figure 1. Factors influencing resilience that leads to effectively meeting student's learning needs.

Self efficacy is the ability to control how you react to any situation in which you find yourself. It is nurtured by beliefs and practices that help you regulate your thoughts, emotions, and behaviour. Self efficacious teachers are resilient teachers. Healthy relationships, grace, learning theories, models and styles, and teamwork are all important factors that help build resiliency; allowing teachers to more effectively meet the learning needs of their students (Figure 1). Research has shown that teachers with high self efficacy tend to improve the educational outcomes of their students (Gibbs, 2002).

During the panel session at the last intensive, the importance of building healthy relationships came up again and again amongst the panelists. They all agreed that by getting to know my students I will be better able to understand and graciously deal with their behaviour. Healthy teacher-student relationships build a platform of trust and respect, on which each party is willing to truly listen to the other and respond accordingly (Rogers, 2011). The joy these relationships bring is also likely to sustain me during to the low times.

Without grace a teacher can bear grudges and resentment against their students. They cannot forgive and move on. Such negativity will slowly drain the energy from you. On the other hand, grace lightens the load. The teacher is not held down by grudges but can look past the hurt in light of the cross and still seek to meet the offending student’s learning needs. Grace also helps the teacher to not be so hard on himself. Grace allows the teacher to leave failures and mistakes behind as he strives to become a better teacher each day.
 
Learning theories, models and styles give you the resources, skills and power necessary to transform your teaching. They help the teacher understand the processes of learning that their students are going through. By continuing to develop their understanding of educational theories and models, a teacher prepares himself to deal with new challenges he might face in the classroom.

No man is an island. No teacher can do it alone. We all rely on our colleagues to support, to mentor and guide us, to bounce off ideas with and to challenge us to be better teachers. By working together as a team, we can more effectively tackle the potentially overwhelming challenges of poor literacy, Maori underachievement and bad behaviour. Knowing your school’s culture and policies can also help you connect with the back-up support that is available; helping you to better manage your teaching workload (Ferrier-Kerr, 2012).

Without self efficacy, beginning teachers can easily be shell-shocked by classroom realities, losing confidence and motivation to push through the low times. Healthy relationships, grace, learning theories, models and styles, and teamwork are some of the resources available to build up resiliency to help you to take control of situations so that you don’t feel helpless and hopeless.


Ferrier-Kerr, J. (2012). Moving into the profession. In C. McGee & D. Fraser 
      (Eds.), The professional practice of teaching (pp.291-308). Albany, New
      Zealand: Cengage Learning NZ.

Gibbs, C. (2002). Effective teaching: exercising self-efficacy and thought
      control of action. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British
      Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, England. Retrieved
      from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002390.htm

Rogers, B. (2011). Classroom behaviour: A practical guide to effective     
      teaching, behaviour management and colleague support. (3rd ed.).
      London, England: SAGE Publications Ltd.