I was thinking about resiliency muscles and physiotherapy again today. A little while ago I wrote one line on this blog asking the question "If resiliency is a muscle, are there physio therapists for it in the same way there are physios for physical muscles?". I'd had a particularly tough week where my resiliency was stretched to the limit. Because of the nature of the challenges, I decided to keep them on a private doc. I'm not sure how appreciative people would be of me publicising some of those challenges (5 challenges, 3 days, from 2 senior managers. Hard!!)
I was thinking about again today though because one of my students crumbled under the weight of two NAs on practice Response to Text essays. He had enough words to tell me he was angry, but the rest of his demeanor showed devastation. After some minutes he had picked himself up just enough to ask me what went wrong - and there was no nice way to put it. He'd completely misinterpreted the texts. Of course I used as nice a tone and vocabulary as I could to explain this to him, but the pain was really hard to watch.
In my weak attempt to reassure him and give him strength to go again, I told him that I wasn't surprised that he fell flat on his bum. We didn't have term 2 exams, this was his first attempt at a closed book timed essay, and I expected there to be holes. He's done plenty of other essays, but using a different skill set. Open book and using as much time as he needed.
For me, when my resiliency muscle hurts, I need people in positions of trust who know stuff about what's going on to give me a boost. My 'physios' 'massage' my resiliency muscle and ease the pain usually with one sentence. Because of who my 'physios' are, that's all it takes to get me up and moving again. They are ladies in positions of trust and authority and who know me well enough to know the right words at the right time. My goal has to be to know my kids well enough to do the same. To know what 'massages' their resiliency muscle when it gets injured.
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