This week Connor Watson came to speak to the students about resilience and perseverance. He retold stories of him growing up and how he had to persist in his training to be a footy player despite his lack of physical size. Once he had a growth spurt and gained the physical attributes he required, he then had to develop skills in resilience, ensuring he learnt form his coaches, from mistakes he made on the footy field and to constructive criticism from his peers. Connor explained that without the life skills of being persistent or resilient, he wouldn’t at the age of 23, be where he is today – a professional football player.

Research is also proving that today’s children need to be resilient and persevere when the going gets tough if they are to succeed in the future. Michael McQueen in his book “Teaching for Tomorrow” identifies 4 Capability Gaps that we as the adults in our children’s lives must address so as to fully equip our children for the future.

Capability Gap#1 is Self -Direction, and Gap#2 is Tenacity.

Recent times – since 1979, the rise of self-esteem has been paramount in how we acknowledge the success of our children. Many of us have used terms like magnificent, unique, special attaching them to every piece of work or activity a child engages in (as a Grandma this happens quite often!) As much as this sounds like great encouragement and praise, what research has found that when these words are used without the child having put in effort and hard work, then the opposite occurs, and children become dependent on this praise, unwilling to try difficult tasks, giving up when they get things wrong or make mistakes. With this mindset, our children don’t learn. We have restricted their ability to learn.

We need to ensure that our children don’t equate easy = right, and hard = wrong. If things get hard, and they do, we need our children to be like Connor Watson. We need them to be resilient and persistent, always learning from their mistakes, accepting challenges and constructive criticism, so that their self esteem is built on self-worth not empty praise.     

Quotes from Year 4 on what they learnt about resilience from Connor Watson.

• Resilience is about keep going, having a go and teamwork. – Zavier
• Resilience is about keep on going even when you failed a test or make a mistake. – Giesela
• Resilience is something that makes you go further and push yourself to the limit. – Patrick
• Persistence means get and go and keep going after falling or failing. – Tyler
• Resilience is not about winning. It’s about teamwork and helping others.- Teddy
• Resilience means when things get hard, don’t worry about it. – Damien
• Resilience and persistence is all about trying over and over until you get better, even if people say you can’t. – Rebecca
• Resilience is when something gets tough, you keep going no matter what. - Charlie
• Resilience is about being trust-worthy and being yourself. – Renee
• Resilience and persistence are important for friendship. – Jordy
• Resilience is when things are hard, just forget about it and move on.- Harper
• Resilience is about forgiving and forgetting, and not all about winning. – Saxon
• Resilience is being confident with yourself and moving forward from your mistakes. – Eva
• Resilience is when you don’t complain when you don’t like something, keep trying your hardest and don’t worry about your mistakes. – Hayley