Embed the language of resilience across your school

To meet this benchmark, you will need to devise and implement an agreed set of language/stock phrases for staff to encourage resilience among pupils. It may require the banning of certain phrases such as ‘You’re clever’ or ‘You’re a natural’. You could also put these principles into a resilience policy.

• Encourage staff to change the way they praise achievement. Using the work of Carol Dweck, you could adopt a ‘growth mindset’ approach. This means praising the effort and means by which a child achieves, rather than the end result. By doing so you are teaching pupils that most things can be achievable through small steps and effort. This thinking prevents pupils giving up; it helps them to persevere. Use the following tips for language change in this download –  ‘The language of resilience’ (growth mindset versus fixed mindset) to help you formulate your school policy.
• You can use the ‘Language prompts’ and the ‘Shut up and move on’ (SUMO) questions to help pupils overcome setbacks or adversity in their lives. These self-talk strategies have been proven to be successful if used consistently and sensitively.
• Try embedding the ‘I statement’ approach. A way to develop resilience among pupils is to help them to be more compassionate and reflective of their actions. By helping pupils to think about the impact of their behaviour on others, you are helping them to grow and improve. Poor behaviour is not perceived as a catastrophic event. Pupils learn to reflect and move on.

Top tip

• Incorporate the agreed strategies and principles into a resilience policy and publish it on your school website.

Make sure that all adults in the school understand the principles and rationale behind becoming a resilient school. They can then use this understanding to inform how they interact with each other and with pupils.

An annual training session would be helpful to help staff know how and when to use resilient language. This could be done through a series of scenarios based on real-life experiences. For example, how staff should speak to pupils about disruptive behaviour in class, using the ‘I statements'. In so doing, they offer choices and chances to recover from a negative situation through empathy.

Staff could also practise how they would respond to pupils who have achieved well or not so well using growth mindset phrases (see ‘The language of resilience’). This will focus on development, process and effort rather than attainment and innate attributes.

Consider also the support staff in your school. They will need to be part of this training because their everyday interactions will have a bearing on how pupils react to adversity. You could use some scenarios where pupils come to them upset by someone else’s actions. Explore how they might react, and using the phrases and prompts from the ‘Language prompts’ and ‘SUMO questions’ downloads, practise how they could help pupils become more resilient.

Top tips

• Consider starting the training session with a clip from Carol Dweck’s TED talk.

The way pupils manage their self-talk when they encounter problems and setbacks is important. By helping pupil leaders to understand the language of resilience, schools can use them to offer peer support. This is potentially very powerful when embedding the language of resilience across the school. 

Consider training pupil leaders to be the champions of resilience. These roles are most appropriate for older pupils who are learning to take on responsibility. Pupils can take turns to be the ‘resilience mentor’ and over time, most pupils from the older year groups can be trained.

How the training might work:

• Once pupils have volunteered to be resilience mentors, arrange for them to watch the appropriate clip for their age range suggested in the further resources.
• Teach them the language of resilience – focusing on the process, the effort, the lessons learned rather than ‘failure’. Give them stock phrases to use to help each other or themselves in school. Help them to rephrase limiting self-talk. For example, ‘I’m never going to be good at this!’ changes to ‘I can’t do this yet, but I’m determined to get better.’ Or ‘I lost that match, I was useless’ could be reframed to ‘I lost that match but I will train harder to win next time.’ Encourage thinking such as, ‘I can’t do it… yet’, ‘They’re doing better than I am… for now.’ Or ‘I don’t understand… yet, but I am learning more each day.’

Often schools use older pupils to help younger ones to read or get better at numeracy. These are ideal opportunities to use growth mindset phrases or positive thinking to help pupils improve their basic skills. By training older pupils, you can widen the reach and impact of the language of resilience.

Top tips

• Try to make sure there is equal access to leadership roles for pupils with SEND to develop confidence and participation.
• Consider ways you could check whether pupils have found the advice and guidance – observations, pupil interviews, etc.

Further resources

• Watch this guide about becoming resilient for kids.
• Use this video to introduce the concept of resilience to primary and Year 7 pupils.
• Share this video with older pupils (secondary school age).
• Listen to Carol Dweck’s TED talk: The power of believing that you can improve.
• Read Chapters 2 and 3 of Mindset.

As we know, parents have a critical role to play in engendering resilience in children. So, helping them understand the rationale for your school’s resilience strategy is really important. Parents will benefit from receiving practical guidance to help them use the language of resilience at home. Here are some ways to help parents:

• Plan and organise a parent workshop.
• Inform all parents about the school’s policy/strategy to build resilience in pupils and why.
• Show them the TED Talk by Carol Dweck.
• Share with parents ways to reframe negative self-talk:
  • For example, ‘I’m never going to be good at this!’ changes to ‘I can’t do this yet, but I’m determined to get better’. Or ‘I lost that match, I was useless’ could be reframed to ‘I lost that match but I will train harder to win next time.’ Encourage thinking such as, ‘I can’t do it… yet’ or ‘They’re doing better than I am… for now.’ Or ‘I don’t understand… yet, but I am learning more each day.’ Also, encourage parents to praise effort and perseverance rather than grades.
• Parents could complete their own self-assessments to see how resilient they are. The suggested resilient language could also help them to become more resilient.
• Parents might find the SUMO questions helpful when dealing with their child’s emotional resilience.
• Parents might find the slide show from the ‘The language of resilience’ link useful when thinking about their own reactions to their child’s problems or setbacks. The ‘dos and don’ts’ are helpful.

Top tips

• Put the YouTube clip on your school’s website.
• Consider devising a parents’ mini-guide to help them build resilience at home.

Further resources

• Share this article about choosing the right words to build resilience with parents.
• Read Chapter 2 of Resilience in schools and health inequalities.

During the era of an outcomes-focused school curriculum, many schools were forced down a very unhealthy road, where grades and league tables mattered more than the substance of the curriculum. Indeed these things mattered more than whether learning was sustained in the long term. Learning dispositions became less important than getting ‘over the line’.

Thankfully, schools are moving away from this mindset and towards ensuring that pupils focus on what they’re learning as well as how they’re learning. The language teachers use in the classroom to give feedback or report on pupils’ progress is very important in engendering a resilient and growth mindset.

Here are some ways you can consider amending your feedback and reporting policy:

• Comment on the effort pupils have put into their work and relate this to pupils’ achievement.
• Report to parents on their children’s resilient characteristics – stickability, thinking through problems, how they are improving through adversity, etc.
• Reward positive resilient behaviours.
• Encourage pupils, when peer-assessing work, to focus on the process and the effort and give next step feedback.
• Encourage pupils to review their own work by commenting on their effort and problem-solving skills and how much they have improved since the last time. They can also be encouraged to devise a next step plan to improve. This serves to reinforce the mindset that perseverance and effort lead to resilience.

A key aspect to building resilience is through planning and taking small steps to overcome problems. By encouraging pupils to make a plan to get better, it will help them in later life as they encounter more problems. Teachers can play a big part in helping pupils to plan their next steps when they are finding things difficult.

Top tips

• Consider using ‘elbow partners’ in class. These become the pupil’s first port of call before they resort to asking the teacher. In this way, pupils learn to problem-solve before they ask the expert.
• Skilful teachers tend to help pupils seek solutions to their problems in class rather than just provide the answers. For example, ‘Have you used a dictionary?’, ‘Talk me through your thinking first…’

A powerful way to inspire children and young people is by inviting motivational speakers to speak to them.

Consider who you will invite and what messages they will convey. You could choose an event such as parents/pupil information evenings, prize-giving assemblies or events and productions/open evenings to deliver your inspirational message.

Schools that engage with TED Talk motivational speakers can also use these as discussion starters for PSHE lessons.

Top tips

• Consider inviting people who have managed to remain positive despite having disabilities.
• You could invite previous students back to school to talk about their successes and strategies to overcome adversity.

Further resources

• Find a suitable TED talk through TED Recommends.