Welcome
Course Introduction
The purpose of this course is to give you the information and resources you need to create a resilient classroom, one that promotes the development of resilience in each of your students. Specifically, the expected outcomes for this course are:
- Definition of the term resilience and why the "resiliency movement" has come about
- A focus on the positive, including moving from "at-risk" to "at-promise"
- Identification of the characteristics of resilient children and adolescents
- An understanding of how resilience is developed, including
- The role of social and emotional learning
- The environmental issues that affect this development
- The relationship between optimism and resilience
- Application of knowledge and skills that promote resilience in the classroom and the school in general, including:
- Identification of your own level of resilience, including your dedication to developing a resilient classroom
- An understanding of the roles various school professionals play, including administrators
- Strategies for promoting social and emotional learning and optimism
- Strategies for assessing, monitoring, and evaluating a resiliency effort
Part One (Lessons 1–7) of this course is designed to provide you with an overview of resiliency from a theoretical perspective. You should complete the first seven lessons with an understanding of what it means to be resilient and how resilience plays out in and is affected by personality, environment, and a variety of other factors.
Part Two (Lessons 8–11) takes the information from Part One and focuses on resilience in a school setting. The goal of these remaining four lessons is to give you the know-how necessary to begin developing a resilient classroom and school, and thus developing resilience in your students.
Catalog Description: Why is it that when faced with adverse circumstances, some students are able to bounce back whereas others seem to struggle with even the smallest of challenges? Some students are simply more resilient than others. Resilience has been connected to important life outcomes that include academic as well as social and emotional success, and resiliency is a trait that can and should be fostered in schools. The purpose of this course is to give you the information and resources you need to create a resilient classroom, one that promotes the development of resilience in each of your students.
Time Limit for Course Completion: 9 months. All assessments must be submitted and graded within this time.
Course Keycode: 2260
Textbooks/Materials
Required Textbooks and Other Materials
- Benard, B. (2004). Resiliency: What we have learned. San Francisco, CA: WestEd.
- Doll, B., Zucker, S., & Brehm, K. (2004). Resilient classrooms: Creating healthy environments for learning. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
- Marvin, N. (Producer), & Darabont, F. (Director). (1994). The Shawshank Redemption. United States: Columbia Pictures.
This film is available to rent through Netflix or other movie rental stores.- One of the following:
Corwin, M. (2000). And still we rise: The trials and triumphs of twelve gifted inner-city students. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
McCourt, F. (1996). Angela's ashes. New York, NY: Scribner.
Merryn, E. (2004). Stolen innocence: Triumphing over a childhood broken by abuse: A memoir. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications.
Pelzer, D. (1997). The lost boy. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications.
Suskind, R. (1998). A hope in the unseen. New York, NY: Broadway Books.
Online readings will be assigned in many of the lessons. For more information, see MU Libraries' Remote Access to Electronic Resources.
How to Study for This Course
If you have enrolled in this course, odds are you are interested in building resilience in your students. Thus, although you will naturally want to work hard in order to achieve a good grade, more than anything you will want to work hard so you can make a difference in your classroom.
To that end, there are several opportunities for you to enhance your learning and to truly think about your learning. Your responses to these will not be submitted for a grade, but the time you spend on them will do much to prepare you for your essay assignments that follow Lessons 1–11. For example, throughout the lessons you will find "Think About It" boxes that will serve as important tools for helping you to think about particular topics more deeply, and to apply them to your own experiences. In addition, each lesson has study questions that will do much to ensure that you are grasping the material. The more you use these important tools, the more you will gain from this course.
Additional Study Hints
- Submit your first assignment early. For university courses, a minimum of six weeks must elapse between the date you submit your first assigned work and the date you complete your reaction paper. The minimum completion time for all other credit courses is four weeks.
- Know how you will be assessed. Look at the grading scale and read all the information about submitted work.
- Accomplish all learning objectives. Learning is active, and courses at any level are often designed with objectives, or actions that can be performed and measured as evidence that you have learned something. One advantage of independent study is that learning objectives are written clearly throughout a course.
- Review the help and study suggestions for independent study. This is an independent study course and is likely different from other courses you have taken. Begin by reviewing these hints, which will help you adjust your computing and study habits so you will have the best chance of earning the grade you want.
About the Course Developers
Dr. Kristi Miller was born and raised in Southern California. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of California–Irvine before moving to the Midwest in 1992 to earn a master's in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She then came to the University of Missouri in 1994 and worked in student affairs for 13 years, most recently as the director of A Way With Words & Numbers, a program that sends undergraduate students into Columbia's elementary schools to do literacy and math tutoring. She also earned a doctorate from MU in educational psychology in 2002. Dr. Miller has worked with the Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools, primarily with their initiative to increase awareness of suicide, and has taught several courses both in the classroom and online at MU, Columbia College, and Stephens College in psychology and education. She is currently an assistant professor in education at Columbia College.
Dorothy J. Landon has worked in the human services field for the past 20 years. She is a school social worker in a public school system in Columbia, Missouri and has held that position for the past seven years. Prior to her current position, Dorothy worked for the Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools at the University of Missouri, where she participated in educating pre-service teachers about mental health in the classroom and consulted with teachers and administrators in a variety of schools. Dorothy has also worked in the criminal justice field with incarcerated offenders and has worked with individuals and families struggling with substance use and abuse issues. Dorothy is certified as a Substance Abuse Counselor on both the state and national levels and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of Missouri. She earned her BS in Applied Psychology from Black Hills State University in South Dakota in 1994 and received her MSW from the University of Missouri–Columbia in 2000. She is currently working toward a PhD in Psychology at the University of Missouri–Columbia.
Technical Specifications
Other Technical Specifications
You will need the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view many of the required reading assignments for this course. Download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader if you do not already have it installed on your computer.
Begin Coursework
Starting with the first lesson, study the lesson's purpose, objectives, and commentary. Then complete the reading assignment and any recommended study activities. Take notes and make sure you understand all the material presented in the readings. Follow this procedure for each lesson. Complete the essay assignments in the order they are presented in this course.
- One of the following: