Features
Resiliency through Relationships By Graeme Scott
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earning is all about connections and relationships. disengaging with discourse, switching off their cameras, Research tells us that students of all ages need at and focusing instead on their gaming careers. least one adult at school that they can connect with on a deeper level if they are to thrive and be Regression or Progression? successful (Rimm-Kauffman and Sandilos, 2011). Back in The predominant concern we read about in the 1997, the National Longitudinal Study media seems to be around how much of Adolescent Health (Klein, 1997) curriculum content has been missed Deep, caring sampled 12,000 US students from during the pandemic, and therefore how Grades 7 to 12 and found that those disadvantaged our students are and will relationships are who reported a feeling of connectedness be in the future. But let us also consider a powerful and with a caring adult in school were less for a moment the additional skills, likely to be involved in every single risk positive influence dispositions and capacities students have area studied (including suicide ideation, developed throughout this period, such on our students. early sex, violence, substance abuse). as independence, resilience, adaptability, Those students who have close, positive organisation, self-management and more. and supportive relationships with their Pre-Covid, one popular criticism of teachers tend to attain higher levels of achievement this generation of students was that they struggled to (Rimm-Kauffman and Sandilos, 2011). More recently, complete extended tasks and lacked resilience. How do Sacks et al (2020) linked positive academic outcomes we test the accuracy of with the relationship between student and teacher, this assumption, when while Longobardi et al (2020) found that a teacherwe would not knowingly student relationship that is characterised by closeness, and deliberately impose affection, and support is associated with higher levels of prosocial behaviour in that student. We can therefore be fairly certain that deep, caring relationships are a powerful and positive influence on our students. Covid-19 deprived many young people of these critical relationships, or at best replaced them with a virtual version. For some this worked out: particularly those students who were comfortable online, had access to suitable technology, and had teachers who understood how best to connect digitally. However, many students admit to withdrawing from the online format,
4 | International School | Autumn 2021
