School Violence Prevention - Resilience

This paper has been put together by Nancy L. Davis on Resilience.

Table of Contents
Part I: Status of Research
People at Promise
Defining Resilience
Risk and Protective Factors, Processes, and/or Mechanisms
The Issue of Risk
The Issue of Protection
Correlations or Causes?

Characteristics of Resilient Individuals
Physical Competence
Social and Relational Competence
Cognitive Competence
Emotional Competence
Moral Competence
Spiritual Competence

Protective Processes within Families
Protective Processes within Schools
Interaction of Family and School Protective Processes
Protective Processes within Communities

Part II: Status of Research-Based Programs
Research-Based Programs That Foster Resilience
A General Approach Applied in Different Settings

Health Realization/Psychology of Mind
Programs that Target Families
Family Skills Training
Strengthening Families program
Focus on Families
Families and Schools Together
Family Effectiveness Training
Behavioral Family Therapy
Structural Family Therapy
Functional Family Therapy
Parenting Adolescents Wisely

Early Childhood Programs

Zero to 3 Years Old
Kempe Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health
The Infant Health and Development Program
Dare to Be You

Preschool: Ages 4 and 5
Perry Preschool Project

Programs Beginning when Children are in Kindergarten or Elementary School
Be A Star

Programs Beginning when Children are in Middle and/or High School
Learn and Service America
Say It Straight
Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America
Adventure Education and Outward Bound

Part III: Recommendations for Future Research

Part IV: References

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute

At the School for Officer Training, we have been focusing on Asset-Based Community Development. This website will provide all that you need to know about this group. It provides an introduction to these ideas - as well as a host of resources that are an incredible asset (no pun intended!) for youthworkers.

Bonnie Bernard, the author of "Resiliency: What We Have Learned" acknowledges the invaluable contribution of this group.

Anyone involved in faith-based community youth initiatives will want to look at this group. There are multiple case-studies to illustrate different ways in which these forms of community organization can occur. Youthworkers - these are great tools which can easily be applied to what we do.

Here's a description:

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) is co-directed by John L. McKnight, director of community studies at IPR, and his long-time collaborator in community research, John P. Kretzmann , an IPR senior research associate. Challenging the traditional approach to solving urban problems, which focuses service providers and funding agencies on the needs and deficiencies of neighborhoods, Kretzmann and McKnight have demonstrated that community assets are key building blocks in sustainable urban and rural community revitalization efforts. These community assets include:

• the skills of local residents
• the power of local associations
• the resources of public, private and non-profit institutions
• the physical and economic resources of local places.

For more information, please click here...

Discipline with Dignity - Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler

I just received a copy of Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler's book, "Discipline with Dignity" - I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into this book. It provides a model for how to create safe spaces by involving youth in defining procedures, rules and consequences based on values or principles compatible with learning. I think that this could be an invaluable resource for youthworkers - particularly for those of us who work with kids who live in high-risk environemnts.

It takes into consideration the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences and the need for difference in teaching strategies - something which has been championed by constructivist educators.

They also explore strategies for working with children who are physically aggressive and explode without provocation, One of my major fears for youthworkers is the danger of not having an effective, strength-based strategy for dealing with anger in our after-school programs. Having a community center serve as a safe space is paramount to having a program that is transformational. This book can help move us all in such a positive direction.

Here's a neat poem written in 1988 by a high school senior from Houston, Texas. This poem is used at the beginning of the book (p.1f.). It captures the tension between teacher and student, or in the case of my line of work, youthworker and youth:

Silent Defiance

I'm the one who watched,
As you laughed;
I'm the one who listened patiently,
While you talked unceasingly;
I'm the one who sat silent,
As your shouts grew louder;
I'm the one who always came,
While your chair sat empty;
I'm the one whose dreams were hidden,
as yours were fulfilled;
I'm the one who cared,
while you butchered knowledge;
I'm the one who watched your petty wars
over something you couldn't understand;
I'm the one who reasoned,
as you discussed,
I'm the one who will remember
when all of you will forget.

Dedicated to Laura - who understood

(Curwin & Mendler, Discipline with dignity, 1999, 1f.)

Janusz Korczak's Declaration of Children's Rights

I came across the writings of Janusz Korczak while reading the work of Larry Brendtro. Korczak is a Jewish youthworker from Poland who lived during the travesties of WW2. His biography, The King of Children by Betty Jean Lifton is a powerful portrayal of a man whose life is lived out for others. Korczak is noted as saying, "The lives of great men are like legends - difficult, but beautiful.

Here is an exert from Lifton's appendix on Korczak's work on the rights of the child:

As a children's advocate, Janusz Korczak spoke of the need for a Declaration of Children's Rights long before any such document was drawn up by the Geneva Convention ( Korczak: 1924) or the United Nations General Assembly ( Korczak: 1959). The Declaration he envisaged-not a plea for good will but a demand for action - was left uncompleted at the time of his death. Culling through: "How to Love a Child", "The Child's Right to Respect", and other works, I have compiled the rights that Korczak considered most essential:

• The child has the right to love.
  ( Korczak: "Love the child, not just your own.")
• The child has the right to respect.
  ( Korczak: "Let us demand respect for shining eyes, smooth foreheads, youthful effort and confidence, Why should dulled eyes, a wrinkled brow, untidy gray hair, or tired resignation command greater respect?")
• The child has the right to optimal conditions in which to grow and develop.
  ( Korczak: "We demand: do away with hunger, cold, dampness, stench, overcrowding, overpopulation . ")
• The child has the right to live in the present.
  ( Korczak: "Children are not people of tomorrow; they are people today.")
• The child has the right to be himself or herself.
  ( Korczak: "A child is not a lottery ticket, marked to win the main prize.")
• The child has the right to make mistakes.
  ( Korczak: "There are no more fools among children than among adults.")
• The child has the right to fail.
  ( Korczak: "We renounce the deceptive longing for perfect children.")
• The child has the right to be taken seriously.
  ( Korczak: "Who asks the child for his opinion and consent?")
• The child has the right to be appreciated for what he is.
  ( Korczak: "The child, being small, has little market value.")
• The child has the right to desire, to claim, to ask.
  ( Korczak: "As the years pass, the gap between adult demands and children's desires becomes progressively wider.")
• The child has the right to have secrets.
  ( Korczak: "Respect their secrets.")
• The child has the right to "a lie, a deception, a theft".
  ( Korczak: "He does not have the right to lie, deceive, steal.")

How to understand this:

• The child has the right to respect for his possessions and budget.
  ( Korczak: "Everyone has the right to his property, no matter how insignificant or valueless.")
• The child has the right to education.
• The child has the right to resist educational influence that conflicts with his or her own beliefs.
  ( Korczak: "It is fortunate for mankind that we are unable to force children to yield to assaults upon their common sense and humanity.")
• The child has the right to protest an injustice.
  ( Korczak: "We must end despotism.")
• The child has the right to a Children's Court where he can judge and be judged by his peers.
  ( Korczak: "We are the sole judges of the child's actions, movements, thoughts, and plans . . . I know that a Children's Court is essential, that in fifty years there will not be a single school, not a single institution without one.")
• The child has the right to be defended in the juvenile-justice court system.
  ( Korczak: "The delinquent child is still a child . . . Unfortunately, suffering bred of poverty spreads like lice: sadism, crime, uncouthness, and brutality are nurtured on it.")
• The child has the right to respect for his grief.
  ( Korczak: "Even though it be for the loss of a pebble.")
• The child has the right to commune with God.
• The child has the right to die prematurely.
  ( Korczak: "The mother's profound love for her child must give him the right to premature death, to ending his life cycle in only one or two springs . . . Not every bush grows into a tree.")