For the last few weeks, we have discussed the major impact of COVID on our students. Today we will talk about the impact of COVID on resilience and ACE scores.

COVID did not cause our students to gain an additional ACE score, but the impacts of COVID could have caused students to gain an ACE score. How do we increase the resilience of our students?

ACE Scores

ACE stands for -Adverse Childhood Experiences. Children under 18 can earn a point for every adverse childhood experience they encounter. According to the CDC, “ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance use problems in adulthood. ACEs can also negatively impact education, job opportunities, and earning potential.”

Adverse childhood experiences include experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect, witnessing violence in the home or community, having a family member attempt or die by suicide, substance use problems, mental health problems, instability due to parental separation, or household members being in jail or prison.

While a pandemic is not listed as an ACE score, it certainly can contribute to a child gaining an ACE score. During the lockdown, substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, and child abuse all increased. Students that once had an outlet at school were now at home every day. The stress for many adults was too much to handle, and latent mental health issues came to the surface. Recovering addicts began using again, and domestic violence increased.

What does resilience after COVID look like?

Resilience is our ability to adapt or bounce back when things don’t go as planned. This is a lifelong skill that can improve our ability to function in life. Life rarely goes as planned! Resilience helps us change course and navigate these unexpected changes.

What do resilient students look like? Resilient students have a positive outlook on the future. Despite the current circumstances, they can look ahead and see positive things happening in the future.

Resilient students set goals. They are excited and looking forward to the future. Students have a plan and can work around obstacles in the way. They do not give up on their goals when something doesn’t work for them.

Most importantly, resilient people do not identify as victims. When we identify as a victim, we give the power to the thing or person that has caused us to become a victim. We are weak and have no control over the situation. Instead of identifying as the victim, resilient people look at a situation and determine what they can control. Sometimes our control is small, and we can only control our attitude about circumstances.

Building Blocks of Resilience

The National Alliance for Mental Health lists the four building blocks of resilience as confidence, purposefulness, social support, and adaptability.

Confidence

We can help our students gain confidence by teaching them coping skills for stress. These coping skills can include breathing techniques such as box breathing or belly breathing. We can also teach our students mindfulness.

Another way to improve students’ confidence is to give students the tools to express their emotions. You can do this by modeling and classroom lessons. The Mind Trek SEL Program has many lessons you can use. Teach students that they aren’t alone. This can be accomplished by doing community groups in your classroom.

You can also help students express their emotions by using a worry wall. Worry walls are a space on your wall where students can go and write their worries. When the space is full, just hang up a new sheet of paper, and students can start over.

Students can be encouraged to express their emotions with regular check-ins. Check-ins can be a simple google form every day that you share with your students, or it can be an entire class affair. Allow the entire class to rate their emotions. Ask students to show their mood with a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-neutral. Another option is to pose a question to the entire class and go around the room, allowing everyone to answer.

Purposefulness

Help students gain a sense of purpose. You can teach them this by teaching them how to set goals. Goals give students the steps to get to the desired end. Teach students SMART Goals and how to set manageable and meaningful goals.

An important aspect of setting goals is learning how to overcome obstacles. Obstacles are ever-present. It is important to prepare for obstacles and learn what to do when they darken our path.

Social Support

Turn your classroom into a community! It sounds simple, but the rewards are boundless. Students need support, and they don’t always get it at home. What better way to give them support than to have your entire classroom supporting one another?

Hold community groups. This is a simple guided time in your classroom where you work with your students to build relationships. You can do this through simple Take 5 breaks, games, or discussion questions. Try check-ins with your students or daily themed days such as Would You Rather Wednesday or Think About it Thursday.

Adaptability

Adaptability is the ability to be flexible and look at the positives of a situation. Help your students focus on what they can control. When students are upset about something, walk through the situation with them and help them discover what is in their control and what is not in their control.

Create classroom lessons that focus on attitude and gratitude. When students learn how to look at the positives in a situation and focus on what they are thankful for instead of what they are upset about, their situation improves. With practice, students will begin pointing out things that are going well and that they are thankful for. They will also help other students do the same.

Reappraisal is looking at a situation from a different perspective. This does not come naturally and takes a lot of practice. One way to help students practice is by showing them a picture. While students are analyzing the picture, have them come up with other ways to think about the situation. I usually show a picture of a dilapidated house to start. Initially, students report that this is terrible and gross. After some practice, students start to say things like at least the people are safe.

SEL Unfiltered

Do you want to hear more? Check out the rest of our series on COVID and SEL Skills on our SEL Unfiltered podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts.

Check out other episodes in our COVID and SEL Skills series, including The Impact of COVID on SEL Skills, Recovering from the Impact of COVID, Reversing Apathy, and Reducing Anxiety.

Game of the Week

Every week on SEL Unfiltered, we like to bring you a game or activity. You can use the game with your students, in the classroom, or in a small group. This week Kaitlin and I played a fun game of Heads Up!

Heads Up! is a fun group game. It is similar to Headbanz. Divide your students into teams and download the game onto a tablet or phone. One person on the team will hold the device above their head. The rest of the team members will describe the word on the device so that the person holding the device can guess. Each turn is timed, and the objective is to guess more words than the other team.

Heads Up! is a great game to encourage teamwork and thinking outside the box.