Everyone will face challenges in their life - life will change. That is as inevitable as anything can get. We are going to look at some people's stories of life-changing challenges and we will look at how they coped.
First, let's look at risk factors. What things will make it difficult to face challenges.
Common risk factors (impairing the building of resilience) include:
· having low self-esteem and poor social or coping skills
· lack of social support from family, friends, community
· truancy, academic failure, and dropping out of school
· experiencing parental conflict and divorce when growing up
· low family income and family disadvantage
· chronic illness, mental health or behaviour or learning problems
· heavy use of alcohol and other drugs
· transience, high mobility.
Even if you can't escape some of these risk factors to resilience you can fight it with protective factors. Things that will make it easier to face challenges.
Common protective factors (helping to build resilience) include:
· having a large social support network (family, friends, people in the community)
· having optimism, aspirations, hopes and plans for the future, and faith that life has meaning
· having at least one close friend
· having at least one supportive parent who shows warmth and caring, who sets clear limits and expectations
· staying longer at school and achieving well
· having many personal interests and hobbies that are valued and recognised by others
· having meaningful employment
· living in a safe and supportive neighbourhood
· feeling connected to the community and one’s culture
· having the skills (and opportunity to use them) for leadership, autonomy (working independently), interpersonal communication and leisure activities
· having thinking skills for problem-solving and decision-making
· being able to see things from other people’s perspectives
· having positive interactions with other people.
Watch these stories and pick your favourite to continue forward with the lesson.
First look at their personal risk and protective factors. What about their lives has made this challenge easier or harder? How? Give an example and explain how it affected them.
Now, look at how interpersonal factors made a difference. Interpersonal is their connection to people. Did they have many connections? If they did do you think it helped them? How? If they didn't have many connections do you think this would have made it more difficult?
Next look at society. What expectations or how people reacted to them change how they coped with this challenge. It is rare when societal factors have a positive influence but see if you can think of some. Were there negative impacts of society on their ability to cope?
How do you think this would have affected their health?
What could they have done to make them more resilient? What can they do once things have happened to strengthen them and give them a fighting chance to handle the challenges in their life. Connect these strategies back to the factors you have already recognised. Explain how they work together to help with resilience?
You can present this in so many ways from something that is written to a speech or a multimedia presentation.
Is there anything you can put into place in your own life?
For the teacher
This works well with the writing portfolio or the speech standard for English.
This is also meant for level 2 health 91236 Evaluate factors that influence people's ability to manage change
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