This month we are giving away The Struggle to Be Strong along with A Leader’s Guide to The Struggle to Be Strong. This collection of thirty true stories by teens will help readers discover they’re not alone in facing life’s difficulties. The leader’s guide uses activities, exercises, role plays, and questions to help students go deeper into the stories, relate them to their lives, recognize their own potential for resilience, and start building resilience skills.
To Enter: Leave a comment below describing how you help kids and teens build resilience.
For additional entries, leave a separate comment below for each of the following tasks you complete:
Each comment counts as a separate entry. Entries must be received by midnight, September 20, 2019.
The winner will be contacted via email on or around September 23, 2019, and will need to respond within 72 hours to claim his or her prize or another winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way affiliated with, administered, or endorsed by Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. Winners must be US residents, 18 years of age or older.
We welcome your comments and suggestions. Share your comments, stories, and ideas below, or contact us. All comments will be approved before posting, and are subject to our comment and privacy policies.
© 2019 by Free Spirit Publishing. All rights reserved. The view expressed in this post represent the opinion of the author and not necessarily Free Spirit Publishing.
How I can help kids and teens build resilience is by teaching them to solve problems independently and Demonstrate Coping Skills. I think that this skill is SO important for children to learn. However I myself am still learning to teach this skill. This resource would be so amazing to have not only for me but for the rest of my teaching staff.
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I currently work with the juvenile detention center in our area and see the benefits of offering group therapy in that setting. Many of the teens feel their experience is unique and isolated. By engaging them in group they are able to see they are not alone and they have peers that can relate to their struggles. This is my 6th year and the JDC Director reports that she has noticed a significant difference since we have started this program. There has also been a reduction in recidivism.
As a School Counselor I hope that I am helping students build resiliency through my social emotional learning lessons that I incorporate into my school counseling delivery with students! 🙂
I work in an outpatient clinic with children and teens on the autism spectrum. So many of my clients struggle with social and emotional aspects of life. I have found that sharing stories of others has helped them to feel less isolated and more understood.
Working as a school social worker in a number of elementary schools I often share your resource and recommend it to teachers. Some have purchased books from you and also appreciate all the tools you provide.
I work with very disadvantaged students, who need as much help as we can offer, to help them recover from challenging situations. I try to focus on growth mindsets in classrooms with teachers and in individual sessions, on building on their strengths, problem solving skills and self compassion. My hope is that with continued bolstering and planting the seeds that they can do hard things, students will continue to build their ability to be resilient, and bounce back from repeated adversity.
I am a school counselor in a PK-12 school setting working with deaf and hard of hearing students. Building resiliency is essential to preparing ones’ readiness post-graduation through multi-approach. This would be a wonderful tool to add to our toolkit.
We have a relatively new Teen Prevention Coalition with a focus on youth Drug Prevention. This would be great to use as activates with this group of amazing kids!
As a school social worker, I teach resiliency in small group and to whole classes through YogaCalm lessons. It’s a powerful concept for even young kids to understand.
Putting energy into areas of your life where you have influence and control help foster resilience. I have this discussion daily with students who are struggling with very difficult situations.
I have students that are facing challenges that would cripple adults; I would love to have this resource to be able to help them navigate their way to wholeness.
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What great resources!!
I support strong, healthy students by raising awareness and training teachers in trauma-informed (and culturally sustaining) school practices and how to use Restorative Practices to build community, positive climate, SEL skills and providing opportunities for student voice and choice, especially in the decisions that impact them!
As a 6th grade teacher in a virtual setting, it is sometimes difficult to tell how students are feeling. Our regular calls help as they get to know or trust me, so sometimes we can talk things out. I also do a class meeting every week that helps celebrate students and the things they do. We take a kindness pledge and share evidence we have seen or done of positive interactions. I would love to have more ideas on how to help students interact, and I think that book would be great for our story/book time together!
Through in school programs we teach and share the empowerment , & the uniqueness of ea. student. -as we teach prevention education. If a student feels strong with in themselves it is easier to use refusal skills and to know they are valuable persons ,who don’t need to use drugs or do anything harmful to their body or mind. It is important to let students know and believe they are special in their own way and can & will do wonderful amazing positive things in this world as they grow.
Our school has started small group “houses” with adult facilitators to encuorage team building and skill building. We are currently working on spreading kindness and organizing binders and lockers for success. We are meeting every 4 days to build our relationships with each other.
I am the Director of Health and Social Emotional Learning in my school district. I support nurses and counselors among my many other tasks. I would love to share this resource with our high performing, high stress High School. Thanks for the work you do to promote these skills for all students!
I am a parent of only girls. In this day and age, any opportunity I have to build them up and help them grow is an asset!
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I work in an elementary school on a military installation. I have found that many children since 9/11 have been shelter and kept from real struggle. This has even become very prevalent in our military children. Working to empower kids with resilience is a major reason why I chose the teaching profession. We need to shape our future with these children, let’s stop hindering their full potential.
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To help students and kids build resilience I have rewritten our advisory curriculum to include lessons that have them identify their strengths, how to use their strengths to overcome any adversity, and lessons that give them a purpose/goals. In addition, I have the teachers building relationships with each of their advisory students.
I provide students with challenging tasks and then provide support for them to work through those tasks, helping students to have the experience of struggling through a challenging task in a safe environment with support in order to show them what it feels like to work through that struggle and to know that it is okay to struggle and to learn how to ask for help when appropriate or to persevere on their own (most of my TAG students do not have a lot of experience with struggling so they do not like the feeling of it and do not know quite how to deal with it -at least academically). This helps them to have a better chance of having resilience when they face challenges in other venues.
I work with a support group called “Addicted to Hope” that is faith-based and supports anyone in the community.
I would be able to add this to my collection of books that provide students an opportunity to engage with literacy and develop their whole self. I have other books/stories on general or specific supports such as, mindfulness, social skills, emotional regulation, ADHD, stress management, dyslexia. Students connect with stories so this sounds like a wonderful addition to my library. Thank you for your consideration!
I am a K-8 school counselor and I help students by teaching them coping skills and by helping them discover their self worth through lessons and activities.
I work with kids daily teaching that their circle may change as they evolve.
Embrace hard things! Encourage productive struggle. Model resilience.
Kids build resilience by having nurturing and caring adults who check on them an model great behavior.
I am an educational consultant and am constantly trying to find resources to suggest to the teachers that I work with to help solidify student’s SEL skills. This may just be one of them!@