Resiliency

I’ve long been fascinated by resiliency—why some seem to have it and some don’t, what nurtures it, and the way this one quality can totally change how life events are experienced. As a teacher, I’ve encountered many students who seem permanently crippled by the adverse circumstances into which they were born and in which they grew up, and others who seem to almost miraculously rise above everything and not just survive, but thrive.

Just this week I’ve talked with several young people who seem to be growing in resiliency, finally, in their mid-late 20’s, after horrendous experiences in their teens. Is it, for them, simply a matter of brain growth and development, the “frontal lobes finally kicking in” as I’ve sometimes put it? Is it that somewhere in their youngest years they experienced acceptance and encouragement that built an understanding of their personal strength and that despite their detours for a decade or more in the middle, that core sense of self was just waiting to be rediscovered? I wish I knew more about the convergence of brain science and sociological research, because it’s probably a combination of factors at work.

Educators in the past 25 years or so have been more intensely investigating resiliency, but often what happens is that by the time the research makes it into a teacher workshop, it’s been filtered through the constant dun of accountability, outcomes, and test score requirements. To often the suggestions of what teachers can do to enhance resiliency are just bromides which sound pretty much like what any good teacher does already. In one example I found, educators are encouraged to build a “web of resiliency” around students being sure to include:

“1.Opportunities for meaningful participation and contribution

2.High expectations communicated

3.Increased prosocial bonding

4.Clear consistent boundaries

5.Life skills taught and practiced”

I can picture my colleagues rolling their eyes in the distance. Any teacher who doesn’t do these things on a regular basis at any level K-12 should have their license revoked! Duh!

What I did find interesting and helpful in perusing the research is actually a work from 1992 that, for once, took the long view—into adulthood.

THE RESEARCH OF EMMY WERNER AND RUTH SMITH

1. They began studying all the children born on Kauai in 1955-- 700 babies.

2. 1/3 of these children were considered "high risk" due to multiple risk factors at birth.

3. Of these "high risk" children, 70 seemed "invulnerable" to the risk--developed no problems.

Two main reasons for this "invulnerability" were identified:

“ They were born with outgoing, social dispositions.

“ They therefore were able to recruit several sources of support for themselves.

4. The other 2/3 of the "high risk" group did develop problems, but the majority were doing well by their mid-30s by their own and others' reports, psychological tests, and

community records (5/6 of the original "high risk" group, 166 of 200, had therefore "bounced back").

How did this process of "bouncing back" happen?

“ They told researchers that someone along the way reached out with the messages: "You matter" and "It doesn't matter what you have done in the past”. Sources of this support, other than family members, were most often neighbors, teachers, and informal youth workers.

“ The person was more important than the program.

“ The programs that assisted most provided support simil

ar to an extended family.

“ The group that bounced back from having problems also had some kind of competence.

"Our findings and those by other American and European investigators with a life-span perspective suggest that these buffers [protective factors] make a more profound

impact on the life course of children who grow up under adverse conditions than do specific risk factors or stressful life events. They appear to transcend ethnic, social class, geographical, and historical boundaries. Most of all, they offer us a more optimistic outlook than the perspective that can be gleaned from the literature on the negative consequences of perinatal trauma, caregiving deficits, and chronic poverty. They provide us with a corrective lens--an awareness of the self-righting tendencies that move children toward normal adult development under all but the most persistent adverse circumstances."

--Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith, Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to

Adulthood, 1992

I’m not sure exactly how they defined “doing well” in the research, but I believe that several points

are worth emphasizing.

First of all, “the person was more important than the program” and the programs that worked best “provided support similar to an extended family.” Functional families provide acceptance for you as an individual, and consistent encouragement to move forward beyond your mistakes and poor choices. They convey an attitude that, to quote another researcher,

“I see what is right with you, no matter what you have done in the past, no matter what problems you currently face. Your strengths are more powerful than your “risks.” And whatever risks, problems or adversity you are facing, you are on the road to bouncing back—you are not at the end of the road.”

Secondly, doing well wasn’t measured by academic test scores, but by psychological testing and life circumstances in the subjects’ 30’s! In other words, despite any earlier brushes with the law, failures in school, or other inadequacies as we normally measure them, by their 30’s these subjects had “bounced back” and were living typical productive lives as adults in their community. Their lives were not necessarily “perfect,” but they were “doing well” by community standards.

Clearly one thing we need to work to create is more programs that attempt to serve “at-risk” youth by creating a “family” atmosphere, with wrap-around services, not just academic coaching to pass the latest state required test. Youth need life skills, practice in problem solving and flexible thinking, clear expectations encased in a loving, accepting group. And then we need to measure the success of these programs by the long view---years later, in adulthood, are the students/clients involved in the justice system? Are they employed? Are they functioning as independent adults? Are they moving forward, contributing to their communities?

One reason I’ve become so enamored of my husband’s work with YouthBuild

programs is that they are constructed just this way, focused on transforming lives. I’ve seen what they can do and met students who’ve totally turned their lives around. And even those who are not “Stop the Presses!” successes, seem to have found a confidence in their own ability to solve problems, developed resources to support themselves, and ways to move beyond old habits and into a positive future.

YouthBuild alumni are among the most energizing group of young adults I’ve ever met. Dorothy Stoneman, founder, Terry, and I only wish the funding existed for this kind of programming wherever there is need.

November Skies!! (Photo Bin)

I'm sure there's a meteorological reason or three why it's always this way, but the sunsets in November here on the Cape are always amazing. Years ago someone also told me that volcanic activity, even half a planet away, during the past year can affect the way the light appears. Supposedly fine dust in the upper atmosphere makes the light refract and the colors glow deeper. If so, there must have been some explosions somewhere this year, because the results above and below have had little post processing, if any. This is actually what I saw.

This magic little spot is Shubael's Pond, within walking distance from my house. The only folks there this evening besides myself, were two fishermen in their pick up truck. Nature takes my breath away again and again.

Thanksgiving sunset (Photo Bin)

Thanksgiving Day Sunset at one of my favorite spots--Sandy Neck Beach, Barnstable. I wasn't the only one who headed there when the sky started to explode with color. Some with cameras, some with kids and dogs. One more reason why I love living here.

A Tragic Death

I didn’t know Max (name changed to protect his family), but his death makes me angry. A former student and success story, he’d been a construction trainer at youth development program in Brockton, MA for a decade before being laid off recently. The administrators in charge of running the place moved people around like cogs in a machine with absolutely no regard for their personal situation or their emotional responses. The same director recently laid off a certified teacher weeks before his wedding, in the middle of student orientation, with similar lack of interest. Just hand him the packet of info from HR and say “Goodbye.” Budget crunches are a ready excuse for layoffs, but the WAY they were done in this very large non-profit corporation just simply lacked human compassion.

As one knowledgeable person in another facility said, after yet another similar lay off, “There is no ‘human’ in their human service agency.”

No thought was given to any consequences, as one employee is just like another. No one bothered to even tell Max that they might be working on acquiring money to rehire him—why tell the employees anything to get their hopes up—or make them even feel like they mattered—because if it didn’t come through, they’d be mad or perhaps even confrontational. God forbid that there be any unpleasantness!

Maybe Max had other disappointments he was struggling with in his life. Doesn’t matter. Not now. He apparently used a key no one knew he had to enter his former workplace, and hanged himself in the early morning hours of Wednesday, his only way to make a statement. He was found by his construction supervisor and friend, who had no say in the lay-off, and will likely never get that image out of his mind. Unfortunately the Christian organization Max worked for will likely not even face the recriminations they deserve. I doubt even the Program Director, VP, or even the devout CEO will acknowledge, even privately, that they are to blame for this tragedy.

I have a friend who blogs more regularly than I who quotes MLK on his page:

“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

How I wish that Max had been treated with justice and love by the powers for whom he worked that last ten years. In death they will laud him as a fine example, a product of their good programming, but it's too late now. This kind of tragedy always brings out the "should of, could of, would have's" second thoughts in those touched by it. Unfortunately, the wrong people will likely be asking themselves what they could have done to prevent this. The powerful culprits will remain blind to their responsibility. Anger is so intertwined with sadness that I can't tell them apart as they morph back and forth. There is still so much work to be done to change in our world. Pick a small corner near you and begin. That will be the best tribute to Max.

Reaction to Success is Wrong

I still don’t get it. I do not understand the meanness and spite with which some people operate in their everyday lives and work. I’m still surprised when greed, jealousy, and the need for control motivate actions, especially in people who have outwardly devoted their lives to helping others. I keep forgetting that baser emotions are not exclusive to the profit-driven world ofcommerce, but can exist everywhere.

Bureaucratic bumbling and ineptitude I have come to expect, but vicious personal action against someone whose personal integrity has never been questioned, still sets off skyrockets in my brain. Sometimes I need to talk with Terry, my husband, and get perspective, when all I feel is a throbbing need to tear someone’s throat out for hurting a person I care for.

However, even when I feel anger driving my own thoughts, I don’t usually want to act on that feeling. While revenge fantasies are definitely at the front of my brain at times like these, I think long and hard about my responses before taking action. Like my husband, Terry, I agree that acting in anger diminishes me and often only closes doors that I might want open in the future. The need for retribution only springs from those baser emotions, a foul harvest, indeed. A rabbit hole down which I don't want to travel.

I used to teach my students that the only thing in the world you can really control is your own reaction to things, to others, to words. It’s never easy to take the high road when others so obviously wrong you. It does, however, usually pay off in ways we can only dimly see as we gaze down the road. At the very least it keeps my blood pressure from causing physical havoc, and forces me to count the many blessings of the life I do have—all of which, both people and a few things, have been carefully gathered over decades of careful living. And as for those whose acts have caused, and will continue to cause such pain and anxiety—there’s a part of me that knows the idea of karma is rooted in millennia of experience. What goes around will very likely come around for them. And if it doesn’t, they are too small in spirit to waste time worrying about.

Those of us injured by them will have long since moved on. “Way will open,” as my Quaker friends used to say.

Labadee, Haiti...#2 The Girl

Her face haunts me.

I met this girl at Paradise Cove in Haiti and though she tried to tell me her name three times, her Creole accent and soft voice made it unintelligible to my American ears. I call her Atabei, for the Taino creator, the original mother in the ancient culture of the Caribbean. It seems fitting as the power of her gaze fills me every time I look at the one good picture I got of her.

Atabei spoke enough English to tell me that she was seven and her brother was 14. She was simply hanging around on the beach where we visited, accompanying her father, who sold sea shells to the visiting tourists. I asked, but couldn't get a clear answer from him where the shells came from, but I gathered he bought them from someone else to sell. Most likely a merchant who paid divers in other areas for the shells. I think Atabei's father and his family decorated many of the shells with the word “Haiti” themselves.

Of course I bought one without the man-made décor. This family seemed to include another young adult (uncle perhaps) who sold metal art a few feet up the hill from the shell merchant.

Neither man knew enough English, it seemed, for conversation beyond the practiced phrases to sell their wares to the tourists, which I assumed they did with the encouragement of the American owner of the cove, since it was private property. Perhaps mom was one of the women up in the simulated village, demonstrating how to roast coffee or make peanut butter from scratch (don't forget to add a tiny dash of hot pepper at the end). I didn't ask.

There were lots of questions I didn't ask of these people, especially of Atabei, who fascinated me. I didn't even take as many photos as I'd have liked—feeling unusually shy about imposing on their lives. I did ask for her permission to take her picture, but I kept feeling like the things I wondered about might be rude to ask. It was a weekday; didn't she go to school? Did she and her brother take off to help her father whenever there were ships in port (maybe one or two days a week) to help make the scene more picturesque, and sell more shells and metal? Was school simply unaffordable for them? Where was her mom? What did she want to be when she grew up? Did she even think of such choices? What did she like to do? If I'd known Creole or she'd known more English, if I'd have been braver about intruding, I'd have asked lots of questions.

Her face seemed so solumn in repose. I don't think I saw but a hint of a smile once, and then it was gone. Her brother too, didn't smile, though the father did a bit, as he encouraged me to buy something and gathered eveyone for a group picture. But they didn't smile in the pictures, I noticed later when I looked more closely. Bad teeth? Unfamiliar custom? Nerves?

There was a quiet stillness about this child that I found unnerving. She seemed able to remain quiet and unmoving, relaxed yet alert, in a way that belied her young age. The contrast to what an American 7 year old would be doing was astounding. Is sitting around and doing basically nothing the norm for her in her world?

There's so much I didn't know, and didn't ask. Where was their house...back in the village of Labadee? What was it made of, how many rooms? What was Atabei's favorite food?

I think her face has stuck with me for many reasons, but the primary one is the huge gap between our cultures which had me tongue-tied with a child—a totally new experience.

I'm usually the one who can talk to children, from toddlers to teens, from any background, who can always find the right question to ask to get them talking about themselves and their world.

Here, in this poverty and sun drenched cove, I didn't know where to begin.

Labadee, Haiti...#1

There are hardly any roads in Labadee, Haiti. The once tiny village of 600 is now grown to about 6000 due to the Royal Caribbean Cruise lines development of the penninsula as a private resort destination for their ships. (The newly constructed dock helped ferry supplies into the country in the immediate aftermath of the recent earthquake. Now it hosts luxurious vessels.) Labadee sits nestled by the edge of the sea separated by tall volcanic peaks from Cap Haitien to the south. Along this northern coast, most stay where they are or travel by boats, usually well-worn dinghies patched and rowed by net wielding fishermen. We were lucky enough to escape the RCI penninsula for the morning on the Haitian Cultural Tour excursion.

We boarded a water taxi with about 30 others. The owner of the tour, an American ex-pat, and two Haitian young men took us to Paradise Cove.

Roberto summarized Haiti's long and difficult history while we remarked on the beautiful, mostly untouched coastline and the huge mountains which rose so steeply from the water's edge.

Paradise Cove, when we arrived, was one of the most unspoiled beaches I'd ever seen, and we waded ashore through soft white sand and protected, gentle tropical waters. The palm-spotted beach was backed by steep mountains with only one house and a boathouse nearby, built into the hillside. Once ashore, the group was divided into two smaller groups each taking turns on the climb up the zig zagging hillside path to the village, while the remainder enjoyed relaxing on the beach, or on lounges floating in the calm turquoise water.

I've read some online critiques of this “village” tour because the village was created specifically for the purpose of educating and entertaining tourists.

My own response was, “So are Plimoth Plantation and Sturbridge village” in my home state of Massachusetts. Locals employed to re-inact what life was like in the sixteen and eighteen hundreds. I see no real difference. The Haitians employed by this tour are locals hired to demonstrate how things are done in the villages inland—which we'd never have any chance to see, otherwise. It's not perfect, but it helped me begin to understand a bit.

And it pumps money into the local economy. Those who were hired as guides had excellent English while the “villagers” had much less, but the craftsmen had the opportunity to sell work and the musicians and guides got additional tips. The tour owner is the second largest employer in the area with about 25 locals at work here.

I came away from this tour with some new perspective. In particular I was fascinated by how many activities in the village require an extended charcoal fire...it's so easy for us to criticize from afar those who cut and burn the rainforest for the trees. If you are stuck without the ability to buy charcoal or wood, you make your own from whatever you can find. The Haitian villagers, we were led to believe, are basically “living off the land” around them. It may not be “sustainable” but it sustains the family then and there. It's very arrogant to make moral judgments on those who have so little, especially without offering an alternative.

The owner also commented at the changes he'd observed over the last three decades in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic. He said that the decision in the 80's by the Dominican government to invest in infrastructure—roads, airports, etc.--had made all the difference. Infrastructure brought investment and construction all along the coastline and now there is a thriving tourist industry with resorts, condos, cruises, and the businesses that supply them. In his words, he's even noticed the existence of an emerging middle class in DR who can now consume goods and keep the economy going. In Haiti, by contrast, any attempt to develop has only landed money into corrupt government pockets over the last 30+ years, discouraging potential building. How sad. Clearly the country has equally spectacular scenery and shoreline, ripe for some thoughtful development, if only there was a stable and honest government to deal with.

Overall, Paradise Cove was a little piece of heaven and a place I'd go back to in a flash.

Beautiful, restful, and educational. I'm sure it's only an approximation of the reality of the interior of Haiti—kind of like Plato's cave shadows. But it's far more than those who stayed on the RCI Labadee private peninsula got to see. They could have been on any well kept beach in the Caribbean; no reminders anywhere that they were actually in Haiti.