In this segment, we're going to talk about the role of schools as adaptive systems for human resilience. Schools play many roles in the lives of children, and we've been talking about this all along in this course. Their job is to educate children, but they also along the way are developing a lot of the adaptive capabilities that children use when they're solving problems, and adapting to difficult circumstances. But schools also provide opportunities for relationships with competent, and caring adults, opportunities to develop your talents, and many other kinds of opportunities that. Build capacity for adaptation, and a lot of those ways that schools facilitate resilience is through relationship building, through capacity building and through encouraging motivation to adapt in children. Many schools also provide some other basics, resources and supports for children. In our community, especially in low income neighborhoods, it's important for schools to provide food, and health care. And family programs that families might need. And also opportunities for children to develop their talents in things like sports, or music, or leadership that some children can't afford to. Go find out in the private world of coaching. So, schools can play a big role in providing opportunities for children to develop their capacities in many different areas. Schools are systems too, and there are scientists who study schools. How they work, what makes for an effective school. And we can evaluate, how well schools are doing. And one of the ways we can evaluate schools is not only by how well children are learning in those schools, but also by how well schools adapt to emergencies or prepare for. Emergency situations, whether it's a tornado or something like a dangerous person entering into the school. In many communities, here, schools practice fire alarms, they practice tornado drills because we have tornadoes in this area. We don't have any hurricane drills, but they do that in Florida and other states in the United States where they experience more hurricanes. And we also have lock-down practice. This is where the school practices, how they'll respond to an emergency involving a dangerous person coming into the school. Schools are very powerful symbols of recovery. And we've seen that in the segments on war and disaster. After a war, after disaster, during recovery starting up and rebuilding schools is extremely important. Because it symbolizes to the whole community. That things are getting back to normal. Not just for children and parents, but for the community as a whole. You may remember the Joplin tornado, we've discussed it. And this, this is Joplin High School, which was completely destroyed by an F5 tornado. A few years ago, and you'll notice on the school sign here, that used to say Joplin High School. The letters were blown away in the tornado. And somebody has taped up by hand extra letters, so it says Hope High School. And it gives you a sense of the significance and meaning. Of, the schools for rebuilding a community. And, Joplin now has a beautiful new high school in, in that community. Teacher relationships matter a great deal, in schools. And in that, in that work that Theron and her, Team has done in South Africa. They asked young people what made a difference in their lives. What did teachers do that helped their resilience? And the youth wrote many different things, but a lot of the themes of what they wrote were that teachers. Showed they cared about them, teachers mentored them, and as one of them said, I know someone who believes in me. Teachers can provide a very important source of support and relationships for young people at risk in the school setting. Bonnie Bernard has talked about teacher, turnaround teachers. Teachers who have the power to really make a difference in a, in a child's life who's struggling. And she argues that teachers promote resilience by their caring, and their support, by their high expectations, and by the opportunities that they provide to children. As mentioned before, great teachers really know how to motivate children. They know how to eh, you know, promote experiences that challenge children but enable them to experience success. That requires just the right level of challenge, not too easy, not too difficult. And. Teachers can help children step by step to learn something challenging, or overco, overcome diff, difficulties. This kind of individualized attention is very important in children developing the skills for resilience. There's been a lot of research on effective schools as well as effective teachers, and the interesting thing again about effective schools is that many of the qualities observed in effective schools resemble the qualities of effective families. And what we learn in general about protective factors and resilience. Good schools have a positive climate. They have strong leadership and they have effective teachers. And those qualities are very similar to the qualities you see in effective families, as well. This combination of warmth. And connection, structure, and expectation appears to be very positive and profound in resilience in child, the development of children. Schools in the United States have also shifted their thinking about how to counsel, how to provide counseling,. To children, and, just like we saw a shift in the history of resilience, there's been a shift in counselling to a much more positive focus, and this new movement is called strength-based school counselling. And they, this movement has shifted from deficit, focus on what, what the problems of children. To counseling on building strengths and focusing on the positive. And it's very much like the general changes we're going to talk about in the next module in, in a intervention based on a resilience framework. After-school programs have also proved to be very important in the lives of children, particularly in research done in industrialized countries. After-school programs provide many opportunities for children to improve their learning skills, and also opportunities to develop other talents, and leadership. And there has been a shift in after-school programs, from. Just trying to prevent risk, for high-risk children, to promoting all kinds of competence. Again, focusing on positive development, and there are now meta analytic studies, that's studies putting together lots of different studies, to see. If after school programs work, and the evidence looks good that they do have overall positive effects. We also are very concerned worldwide about school readiness, because we've realized that not all children come to school. Ready to learn. Children vary in how prepared they are to enter formal schooling. And we've learned from research now that if we invest in school readiness by high quality early childhood programs, either focused in education in home, at home or education in a preschool. Formal sort of program that this can make a real difference in how prepared children are, to learn when they enter the first years of school. And there many examples of high quality, preschool programs around the world. Ranging from Montessori to head start to Reggio Emilia. And the goal of a lot of these programs is to try to address the achievement gaps that we see. The gaps where some children learn and perform much better than others. And many of the achievement gaps we see around the world. As well as in a certain community like my own community, are related to poverty and opportunity. If children don't have as many opportunities, they don't, they grow up in poverty, they don't have, they, they've experienced discrimination, they don't have the chance to go to early childhood programs of high quality,. They just start off behind when they enter school. And there's a lot of interest in addressing these kind of achievement disparities around the world. There certainly is a tremendous interest here in my own community and the interventions are taking many different forms. And you've heard some about that already, and we'll talk more about that. But the goal is to promote. Educational success in high risk children. In other words, to promote their resilience.
