Resilience Begins with Beliefs

As adults working in schools, educators’ beliefs translate into messages, actions, and behaviors that can enhance or impede student success. This book affirms why beliefs are so important and why it is imperative to spend time focusing on, reflecting upon, and affecting educators’ beliefs—especially about students’ resilience. The author draws from her extensive experience in research, policy, and practice to present a wealth of information, strategies, and tools to help educators transfer current resilience theory and research into practice. Unfortunately, educators are not always publicly supported, financially rewarded, or highly valued. Responding to these realities, Resilience Begins with Beliefs is an effective resource to support the resilience of the teachers and administrators working in our schools, as well as to facilitate any environment conducive to greater learning and life outcomes for all students.

Book Features:

• Identifies concrete strategies for harnessing resilience in classrooms and schools.
• Encourages and promotes reader interaction with reflection questions in every chapter.
• Offers format suggestions for preservice and professional development programs.
• Provides many user-friendly features, such as personal reflection ideas for facilitators and participants, and a resilience-in-practice checklist.

Sara Truebridge is an education consultant and researcher with over 20 years of classroom experience. Prior to teaching, she was the legislative analyst for education in the New York State Senate and the special assistant to the New York State secretary of state. She also serves as an education consultant to documentaries, including Race To Nowhere and Love Hate Love. Contact the author for professional development at resilienceST@gmail.com.)-Important

“This book should be added to every teacher’s wish list.”

—Michigan Reading Journal

“I strongly recommended this splendid book.”
—Sir Michael Rutter, Institute of Psychiatry, London

“A must-read for educators at all levels, from preschool through the end of high school.”
—Suniya S. Luthar, Arizona State University.

“In this book, Sara provides clear tools, techniques, and strategies that can actually take something as elusive as beliefs and make it something understandable and embraceable in a concrete context. Furthermore, this book is not only written for teachers but also for educators, administrators, and policymakers in education at all levels—federal, state, and local. In fact, I feel that this book would be a beneficial resource for anyone working within any human service system.”
—From the Foreword by Bonnie Benard, resilience researcher and author of Resiliency: What We Have Learned