The Educator's Guide to Building Child & Family Resilience

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W e believe that literacy can be used to foster resilience in children and families. As we’ve seen in our work with the Yale Child Study Center- Scholastic Collaborative for Child & Family Resilience, the more children learn about the world through stories and reading, the more opportunities they have to grow and flourish. It’s a simple but profound link—literacy to resilience to better health. As we look at the factors related to child and family resilience, we are focused on some of the same questions that you have: • Why do some children seem to thrive despite adversity in their lives? • Can we develop capacities among children for greater resilience? • In what ways can educators, who aren’t trained mental health professionals, help children and families cope with adversity?

The Yale Child Study Center-Scholastic Collaborative for Child & Family Resilience is a partnership with a mission—to give children the skills they need to flourish and reach their fullest potential. Researchers and medical professionals together with publishing teams develop literacy and health- based intervention resources for children and families to

YALE CHILD STUDY CENTER+SCHOLASTIC

address developmental and mental health concerns. These two organizations are united in the firm belief that literacy promotes health and well-being. Default Color

The Resilience Scale Many people imagine resilience as a rubber band—when we are stretched or stressed, we can bounce back. That metaphor assumes resilience resides within the individual person. It inherently puts the burden of that elasticity on the individual child or adult. The FrameWorks Institute and the Palix Foundation, consulting with Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, have introduced a metaphor that aptly conveys the principles of child resilience (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2015). Their Resilience Scale model, adapted by the Palix Foundation, shows a scale with the child as the fulcrum in the middle.

18 The Educator’s Guide to Building Child & Family Resilience

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