“I am responsible for who I am in the world”

Christine’s approach to promoting resilience among teacher education students emphasizes personal responsibility, self-awareness, agency and tenacity. As coordinator of the first year unit, Understanding Teachers’ Work, Chris establishes building resilience as an important aspect of learning to become a teacher.

One of the main things would be to understand that your life history has an effect on who you are … and that history develops dispositions to particular ways of being. Some of us have already developed dispositions for resilience, we are able to deal with difficulties, we are able to overcome them and we are able to move on. Others of us find that more difficult.

Using an autobiographical approach she engages students in writing life histories to examine how who they are, their contexts, experiences of schools, influences them as prospective teachers. In doing so, resilience is discussed explicitly.

We put it in the foreground of their minds.   We talk about being resilient and being responsible for oneself and one’s place in the world. We make explicit from the start that being resilient is really important for being a teacher. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not a linear process, there’ll be good times and bad times.

In helping students deal with challenging situations, Chris asks students to reflect on three key questions - “What was your role?  What was your responsibility? What did you choose to do?”  While emphasizing personal responsibility is important, sometimes pre-service teachers are in challenging situations where there are uncontrollable barriers to success.  In these cases, support from teacher educators is critical. Pre-service teachers need to know: “I’ve got your back, and if it does turn bad, I’m there to help you”.

Resilience is so important, but for some people it’s just so hard. It’s not playing the victim, but thinking about what you will do? I come back to that same question - what will you do?