Copyright © 2018 by Elena Aguilar. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Brand
One Montgomery Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594—www.josseybass.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Permission is given for individual classroom teachers to reproduce the pages and illustrations for classroom use. Reproduction of these materials for an entire school system is strictly forbidden.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.
Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
ISBN 9781119367383 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781119367277 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119366973 (ePub)
Cover image: © Erick Joyner / EyeEm / Getty Images
Cover design by Wiley
Welcome to your workbook.
This is a place for you to explore the ideas I've described in Onward and to engage in practices that might shift your thinking, feeling, and behaviors. Resilience is cultivated with intentional action, and I hope that action might start in the pages of this book. I hope you'll allow me to guide you along some of the paths that can boost your resilience.
This book is me as a coach. It contains the questions I'd ask you if I were coaching you or facilitating your team's weekly meetings; it contains the activities I'd suggest that you try. You always have choice, and you don't have to do any activity that you don't want to do. But if we met in person, you'd hear the encouragement in my tone of voice and the gentle nudge in my words, “Just try it!” I'd encourage you to try every activity in this book, even the ones you'd like to turn away from.
Here are some of the ways I envision you using this workbook: I see you waking early on Monday, having slept a full eight hours, but up in time to crack this book open before heading off to school. I see you drinking a cup of coffee or tea, flipping through the chapter of the month, and spending 15 minutes on an exercise before going to school. In another scene, you're using this book with a group of colleagues, reflecting on one of the activities and talking to each other about your insights and connections. Sometimes I see you in the evening, jotting down a short reflection on one of the activities you'd tried that day. Finally, I envision you on a weekend afternoon, sitting under a tree or somewhere comfortable and digging into one of the activities that'll take a little longer, or going through a series of activities.
I hope you will integrate this workbook and its activities into your daily life. Toss it into your school bag on occasion, even only so that it serves as a reminder of what you're learning and practicing. You will cultivate your resilience if you engage in these activities regularly. You're about to build some mighty resilience muscles'and those need daily strengthening.
Each chapter contains enough activities for you to do one each day for a month'that's how I've envisioned that this workbook (and Onward, the book) will be consumed. However, there are many activities that you'll want to try more than once. You'll need to transform these activities into mental and physical habits in order to truly cultivate your resilience. It's the equivalent of wanting to have big biceps; you know that you'll need to do more than one set of biceps curls on one day if you're going to change your body shape. Of course, I don't assume that you'll be able to do every one of these exercises every day. That's why you need to try them all'so that you can figure out which ones work best for you and which ones most benefit your mind.
The order of activities in each chapter is somewhat random. The first activities introduce the habit, and the final activities guide you to reflect on your learnings from the chapter. I've organized the activities in between to offer variety in the kinds of activities and the topics they explore. You might go through them in order, but you are also welcome to jump around to the ones that most interest you.
Each chapter offers a few recurring exercises in which the structure is the same, but the topic is different. For example, I invite you in every chapter to explore an emotion (such as love, envy, or anger) through visual art. Each month, I also invite you to write a letter to an emotion as a way to understand that emotional experience for yourself. I close each chapter with an activity to help you reflect on the learnings in the chapter and also concretize a vision for yourself of a more resilient you. One of those activities is called “Destination Postcard” (a term adopted from the Heath brothers' brilliant book Switch). That's an activity for which I hope you'll consider sketching, collaging, or doing anything that makes that vision more vivid and meaningful to you.
Some of these activities will be best engaged in before or after school, or when you have more time. The following icons clarify which activities will be best during what time of day.
An activity for morning
An activity for evening
An activity for when you have a little time and perhaps a reflective, relaxing space to sitThis is your workbook, and to make the most of it you'll need to do what feels right for you. You'll also need to stretch yourself.
You might want to go through this book in the order it's written. Or you could engage in the activities according to the month they are aligned to. In Appendix A of Onward, there's a reflective tool to help you identify which habits and dispositions you might want to focus on. Or you might just jump around this book in random order. It's up to you! It's your book.
I'll introduce dozens of resilience-boosting strategies in this book. I encourage you to try them all! Some will resonate more; some you'll want to repeat; others will feel uncomfortable. For example, I'm very visual, and if I draw something (even with my scribbly stick figures), the ideas are more likely to stick in my long-term memory. But this may not work for you. Try everything and be open to what happens, but also know that you don't have to repeat activities that feel too awkward.
That said, do try the drawing prompts. If you suffer from fear of art or believe that you're “bad at art,” the easiest advice I have for you is this: Shove that fear and anxiety into a box and take it out at the end of the year. It's an old fear, it won't help you here, and it's only going to impede your ability to cultivate your resilience. You might also consider a detour adventure into the land of sketching and sketch notes, starting here: rohdesign.com. You'll be amazed at what you can pick up in just a couple of hours and how these sketching strategies can deepen your self-knowledge and understanding'and, ultimately, your resilience. Don't let your insecurities about drawing or art prevent you from messing around with images, crayons, collage, and stick figures. No one will judge your art except you. So just don't.
As you try the activities, it's essential to preserve time for reflection. You will miss important insights if you plow through the exercises without pausing to think, write, and talk about your learning. I hope that by the end of the book and, ideally, after a year exploring these strategies, you'll know which ones work best for you. This is an individual discovery; the things that I do when I'm feeling emotionally depleted may be different from what works best for you or for your colleagues. So try everything!
Your learning and application will be more profound and permanent if you talk about this experience with others'which is why in my wild fantasies, you're going through this learning with friends, colleagues, and teammates. And your conversations with them might lead to closer interpersonal connections, which adds another layer of resilience. The process of putting experience into words also happens when you write, so don't skip the writing prompts.
You don't need much for this workbook, but an excuse for a few extra office and art supplies makes some of us very happy. Find a few pens that you like to write with, ones that run smoothly and fluidly. Maybe get a special pen or two. Keep a pencil nearby, and perhaps a set of thin markers. Find what works for you and what you enjoy using.
There will be sections in this workbook where you may want to add additional pages of writing, images from magazines, and photos. Keep a glue stick and roll of tape handy. I can't read anything without using stacks of sticky notes'that's how I flag pages and ideas to return to'so consider this an invitation to expand your collection of sticky notes. It's also possible that you might want a blank journal. Although I've provided space for you to write in this book, you may need more journal space if you're like me and find writing cathartic.
Although I am confident that you'll get a lot out of these activities if you engage in them alone, I encourage you to find another person or a group with whom you might undertake this learning. Perhaps your department or grade level can incorporate this learning into team meetings during the year; maybe you could start a book study with other teachers in the district. If you're a principal, perhaps you could make a study of this book an option for a strand of professional development. Although being with others in person is ideal, you can also find a community of educators engaging in this learning online through the website, www.onwardthebook.com.
This workbook, as well as Onward, invites vulnerability. If you read this book with colleagues, I encourage you to establish agreements for your conversations. Here are some examples:
If you engage in these practices together, two things could happen: You might experience discomfort, and you might create deeper, more meaningful connections with colleagues. In other words, it will be well worth the discomfort.
Here's my fantasy: In schools across the world, on a Wednesday afternoon'or perhaps a Friday morning (a much better time for educators to engage in serious and focused learning), groups will gather to learn about and cultivate emotional resilience. We'll start with exploring our own resilience, and there'll be time for reading and writing, talking and practicing the strategies in this book. Sometimes there'll be markers and snacks and even musical instruments on the tables.
There'll often be laughter and maybe a hug, and even a tear or two. And then there'll be conversations about how to shed ourselves of biases so that we can see our kids' full humanity and potential and how to cultivate resilience in our students. We'll have conversations about how to build our students' social and academic skills, so that they can do whatever they want to do with their wild and precious lives. We'll listen to each other's heartbreak and hope, and we'll talk about despair and fatigue, and we'll tell stories about our ancestors and stories of survival and resistance. When the meeting ends, we'll practically bounce out of our chairs feeling energized and alive and connected to each other, and we'll leave the room saying, “I can't wait until our next meeting! This is the best PD I've ever had!”
Please visit www.onwardthebook.com for more resources and videos, to download tools, for guided meditations, and to engage in community discussions on these topics.
Consider engaging in the activities in this chapter after reading Onward's introduction. You'll be introduced to some of the key ideas in this book, and you'll also muster your commitment to practicing the habits of a resilient educator.
Onward describes the journey to cultivate resilience. I've offered the metaphor of an internal wellspring of water to represent the resilience that lies within all of us, which we can journey to, tend to, and fill through many actions. Those actions are the 12 habits of a resilient educator, and I think of them as paths we travel down as we make our way to that inner pool. Along the way, we pass through the terrain of the 12 dispositions of a resilient educator, and as we explore those, we cultivate more resilience.
I'm so glad you're taking this journey. It's time to put on your hiking boots and get started. In the space provided at the top of the next page, draw a picture of the boots you'll wear, with your legs sticking out of them. Because this is your journey, your boots can look however you'd like: Worn and broken in or brand new and covered in sequins and glitter. This is your journey and your book, so you don't need to wear hiking boots at all! If you'd be more comfortable traveling in flip-flops, by all means wear those. Or if you're more confident in heels, put them on! Alright, let's get going!
What's brought you to this book? Why are you interested in resilience? Why do you want to develop your own resilience?
What do you want to be true when you've finished reading Onward and engaging in these exercises? How do you want to feel?
What are the challenges you feel you face currently in your work? List as many as you can.
Now go down your list and code them as big (B) challenges, medium (M) challenges, or small (S) challenges. What do you notice about your list?
Which strategies do you currently use to manage the stresses and challenges you face at work? For example, if you have a colleague who drives you crazy, what are your coping mechanisms? Imagine that you have a toolbox for dealing with adversity and stress. What's in it right now? You could list your strategies here, or if you'd like you could also sketch a toolbox and label the implements within.
As you go through this workbook, I'm going to encourage you to collect artifacts of your experience as you build your resilience. These might include photos you take, books or journals, cards you receive from students, sticky notes, or even lesson plans! Yes, these could become artifacts of the resilience you cultivate. You'll need a place to store these artifacts. You might need only a file or a pocket in this workbook or a journal, or you might need a chest.
To create a pocket: You could affix this pocket to the front or back cover of this workbook, so that it will always be accessible, or to a journal you're also using. Find a piece of study paper or a file folder and cut it into the shape you want. Tape or glue it into place, leaving one side of the rectangle open. Duct tape works especially well to keep it secured. Decorate the front if you want. Then, so your pocket isn't lonely, find something to put in it. A leaf. The stub from a movie that inspired you. A copy of your student roster. Your class photo.
If you're excited by the treasure chest idea, go for it. Make it beautiful and inviting.