I don’t know where resilience originates. I don’t always know it when I see it. But I know that in our poorest schools, resilience can prove to be essential to success. Those kids who lack this magical quality seldom triumph over poverty and instability, seldom manage to fill in their educational deficits.

Eduhonesty: We spend too much time looking at instructional techniques and not enough time looking at the kids themselves. We need to learn why some 2nd grade readers will slog through 5th grade books and others just stuff that book in their locker. I can cite a few factors that obviously matter, but I can also find kids along the way without school supplies, computers, quiet places to work, or even available, supportive parents, who nonetheless regularly blast their way through their schoolwork with enthusiasm.

My questions:

1) How can we cultivate resilience?

2) How can we protect the resilience of those students who are still in the game despite all the odds against them?