The Invisible Backpack

Resilience and perseverance are crucial life skills that educators can help struggling students learn. How do we maximize our influence with each student and best prepare them for their futures given their life challenges?

ELDON'S SESSIONS:

Session 1 – A Tale of 2 Backpacks

Each day children and youth come to school with a backpack full of school supplies and lunch. Often there are surprises at the bottom of the backpack!! Each child also carries an invisible backpack filled with the stories about their lives that a school staff person may know nothing about. Knowing what is hidden in the invisible backpack can give us clues about their poor school connection; struggling with academic achievement; and difficulty connecting with peers and adults. Thinking differently about how to manage struggling students when we often don’t know their hidden stories will make a difference in how to approach them. Strategies will be presented.

Session 2 - Building Resilience in Struggling Students

Students benefit from developing a resilience-oriented mindset, especially when facing challenges in life. Educators have a great opportunity to help students learn perseverance and resilience. Resilience grows through compounding experiences of success in the classroom and attachment to teachers. Strategies will be discussed.

Session 3 – Assessing Struggling Students Creates Professional Stress

Using the triangle of assessment to help educators make appropriate and meaningful judgements of student growth is the focus in this session. How creative can you be with adjusting the triangle of observation, conversation and product as you assess struggling students? Responsible professional judgement is crucial when assessing struggling students. Flexibility is an important consideration in this paradigm.

RYAN'S SESSIONS

Session 1 – My Story of Resilience: 1753 Days with a Broken Neck

• Sharing the scariest moment of my life, the lowest moment and the key life-defining experiences that took place in my fight to keep moving forward.

• Exploring the absolute need for the life-skill of resilience, and the various connections between resilience, decision making, community, purpose and healing.

• Concluding with the value of the lessons I have learned in my personal life and their amazing impact on my professional life as a youth worker and a leader.

Session 2 – A Tale of 2 Students

• Emphasizing the magnitude of influence a teacher is capable of having on students from every walk of life.

• Understanding the three main battlefields/barriers that keep young people from developing true resiliency.

• Seeking to further understand the platform of teaching and how to make yourself accessible to both privileged and at-risk students.

• Delving into the powerful issues that students aren't talking about but “wish their teacher knew”

• Further discovering the true calling of a teacher by looking at questions great teachers ask.

Session 3 – Mentoring & Resilience

• Defining & discussing mentoring from a classroom perspective. Emphasizing the incredible impact a teacher can have from adopting a mentor role in the classroom.

• Exploring the connection between mentoring and resilience. Outlining a number of crucial demands that the resilience-teaching paradigm requires to be truly successful.

• Taking a hard look at some of the statistics that show the obstacles to mentoring relationships between students and teachers.

• The legacy of a teacher committed to growing resilience in their students.