Spencer school project promotes resiliency

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences.”

Spencer School District students have learned how to be resilient in part through the intentional efforts of their Spanish teacher, Lisa Vann.

Vann not only teaches Spanish; she also teaches English and other academic subjects to English language learners (ELL) and serves as the school’s migrant program liaison. She has had to learn resiliency in her own life, prompting her to want to teach her students that skill. She can relate to the struggles her students go through.

“My mom was from Spain, so I was already an ELL before that was a thing (before they had staff in schools to specifically help those students),” she said.

She also has dealt with personal hardship, particularly when her husband passed away from cancer in 2018.

“When my husband died, I realized I had put all my efforts into being this person’s wife. When that rug was pulled out from underneath me, I realized I had poured myself all into one identity. I found resiliency by pouring into my other identities. I’m also a mom, teacher, aunt, grandma — I have many identities. I’m trying to teach my students that when we are struggling in one identity, we can lean into those other identities and focus on those, and eventually the one that’s struggling will get better.

“For example, I’ve had a student walk into my classroom and it seems like their spirits are down. When I ask what’s up, they might say, ‘Oh, we lost our game yesterday.’ And they start to go down that failure mindset because they didn’t perform the way they wanted to. So I tell them, ‘You may have a failed expectation for the day, but that doesn’t make you a failure. You’re still awesome at art,’ or ‘awesome as a brother’ or sister, or whatever I see in them. On a day when your athlete identity is not going as well, you can lean into those other identities.”

Vann also has a desire to show students they are not alone — that they can find strength from others going through the same obstacles and challenges. For Vann personally, that has looked like leading a widows and widowers’ group.

“We can lean into each other and learn from our diverse and yet unified identities for strength. We can also reach out for help and reach out to help one another to become more resilient to changes in our lives,” Vann wrote in a description of her Resiliency Project.

To put these concepts into practice, students participate in several tangible activities. Vann has her seventh grade Exploring Spanish students create artwork called papel picado, Spanish for “bitten paper.” Each student receives a sheet of brightly-colored tissue paper and folds it in half once or twice. As the students think about the stressful things that have happened throughout their day, they are supposed to cut out a small piece of tissue paper, crumple it up and throw it away. When the tissue paper is unfolded at the end of the class period, a unique design is revealed.

“Each day is precious and fragile, but it’s still a beautiful day. I talk to the students about making sure we’re not taking away from a person’s day with our words or actions,” said Vann.

She displays the papel picado in her classroom as a symbol of the beauty found in diversity and how each person contributes to their community in their own way.

Vann also had her seventh-grade students and some of her high school students make a short video introducing themselves using prompts such as “I am not just (fill in the blank); I am also …,” for example, “I am not just an athlete; I am also an artist.” or “I am not just a student; I am also a brother.” Other prompts include “I am valuable because …” or “I have (fill in the blank) to offer this world.”

“The hardest one for them to answer was ‘I have (fill in the blank) to offer this world,’ which made me sad at first, but it’s cool to see how they have grown in that. And then I try to take it a step further. So if a student says, ‘I have kindness to offer,’ I’ll say, ‘That’s awesome; so how do you plan to share that this weekend? How do you plan to put that into action?’ I’ve had kids come back on Monday and tell me, ‘Oh, I went home this weekend and encouraged people to use kind words.’ I’m so proud of them for that.”

The purpose of the “I am” statements is to help students gain a better sense of their value and all they’re capable of. Fourteen staff members also made videos introducing themselves and sharing about their families, hobbies and interests outside of school. Vann hopes the videos will help the students better relate to the staff. She wants students to have at least one staff member they feel comfortable talking to if they are struggling, having a bad day or just need a listening ear.

“In our PLCs (professional learning communities), each staff person is assigned a student and we make sure each student is reached out to at least once a week. These videos are a way to help the students match their personal interests with the teacher,” said Vann.

Resiliency is one of the three Rs of expectations Vann has for her classroom, the other two being respect and responsibility. She said these three traits will help the young people be global citizens and be prepared to cope with any challenges that come their way.

She said that the overall response to the resiliency project has been positive. “I think it’s empowering to them. I’ve seen more of my students trying out for sports or different clubs with more confidence. Just the other day, I was watching a student playing basketball. She took a pretty rough tumble, got up and looked really discouraged. I looked at her and said ‘Ganas,’ which in Spanish means the desire strong enough to overcome all obstacles. She smiled, got up, dusted herself off and went on to play really well the rest of the game. Later she told me that was the word she needed to hear in that moment. And who doesn’t need more resiliency in today’s world?” Vann said.

Vann hopes to eventually expand the Resiliency Project to other local schools.

Spencer Spanish teacher Lisa Vann’s seventh-grade Exploring Spanish students show case the papel picado (“bitten paper”) art project they made as part of a lesson on resiliency.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO