Resiliency 101

A teacher's influence on a student often transcends the curriculum, with a child garnering life lessons, work habits, and perspectives that he or she will rely on for the rest of his or her life. However, these are often singular stories. The concept of actually offering students a well-defined and organized diet of life skills during school is far less evident. In fact, it's almost nonexistent. The subject of teacher involvement in students' personal lives is even more taboo and has been part of a perpetual, roiling debate among educators.

Jami Jones, however, had no interest in debate. A high school library media specialist from Naples, FL, she was galvanized to act, to do something meaningful, after the death of her son's troubled girlfriend. After taking herself to task for not "intervening," she vowed that she would no longer ignore the maladies of kids who come from broken homes or impoverished, dysfunctional, or abusive families.

Jones launched a program to equip students with the crucial skills they need to handle the conflict and adverse conditions in their lives—to help make them more resilient. Newsweek magazine published a brief account of her experience in its March 3, 2003, issue. In this issue, we chronicle her program and how it can help make a difference in kids' lives (see "Saving Kids from Despair ," pp. 46–49).

It turns out that Jones's initiative, the "Library Ladder of Resiliency," meshes very well with an important study recently completed by the Children's Hospital of Boston and published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. The study investigated resiliency among 155 extremely poor children, all of whom had experienced homelessness and other traumas. One of the key findings of the Children's Hospital study was that critical skills that contribute to resiliency can be taught. Several of these skills are found in Jones's Library Ladder of Resiliency.

Enrico Mezzacappa, a doctor at Children's Hospital and a coauthor of the study, cites two meaningful parallels between his research and Jones's work in the areas of mentoring and social skills. Mezzacappa and his colleagues found that children who had more involved caregivers were more resilient. The researchers also found that more resilient children had a more complete mix of social skills; they were able to express and control their emotions and behaviors in different situations—including the classroom and the playground.

"A lot of kids come to school unprepared to be in school—academically, socially, and otherwise," explains Mezzacappa, who says many of them cannot execute basic functions intrinsic to the learning process. In order for students to be successful learners, they need to be able to "screen out distractions, to sit still, to be able to follow the teacher's instructions."

The Children's Hospital survey points to the essential need for more programs like Jones's. Teacher-librarians can easily argue that they are already being stretched in enough directions. They can also argue that this sort of program doesn't contain any discernible template for directly measuring against the Holy Grail—student performance. They would be correct on both counts.

However, the quality of children's lives hangs in the balance, and the library can make a profound difference.

Too many children and teenagers will never become successful learners, thanks to the rampant isolation, alienation, and abuse in their lives that no one has taught them how to handle. School and public libraries are perfectly positioned to push for and provide programs that will equip kids with the resiliency skills they need to overcome their hardships and become prosperous lifelong learners.