Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): LD SIG Grant Awardees’ Reports

LD SIG Grant Awardees’ Reports |LD SIG 研究助成金受賞者の報告
Building learner resilience in the classroom: A conversation
with Judith O’Loughlin, plenary speaker at JALT2018
Gretchen Clark, Ritsumeikan University, <gretchen3clark@gmail.com>
Judith B. O'Loughlin has taught in K-12, adult education, and graduate
university TESOL endorsement programs. She has also consulted and taught
for U.S. federal and state grants to train ESL and Special Educationteachers. As a consultant, her focus is on standards-based differentiatedcurriculum, collaborative teaching, and newcomers with interruptededucation. She is the author of the Academic Language Accelerator(Oxford) and co-author of Students with Interrupted Formal Education: Where They Are and What
They Need (Corwin).
On the Monday morning of the JALT 2018 conference in Shizuoka this past November, I wasfortunate that plenary speaker, Judith O’Loughlin, was willing to chat with me about resilienceand how to nurture it in the classroom. We touched on several topics but the most meaningful tome are included in the short excerpt below.

Listening to Judith’s plenary at the JALT International Conference in Shizuoka, it was apparent
to me that two powerful factors in the promotion of resilience in any context, both the personaland educational, may be: first, having a positive attitude and second, having a safe environment inwhich to grow. In her many years as a teacher mentor/ educator in the ESL context, Judy has
worked with several students who come from tough communities or unstable home lives and others
who have linguistic challenges learning English as a second language. Confronted with a variety ofstressors such as these, practicing resilience becomes very important for her students if they are tosucceed both in the classroom and in life itself.
I am interested in how resilience might come into play in my context: the tertiary level EFL
classroom at a private university in Japan. While my students may or may not have adverse
personal lives, I feel Judy’s ideas about resilience could be explored in the classroom and prove tobe helpful for university students both as learners of English and also on the personal front. For
example, Judy spoke of several classroom models used to promote resilience. Grotberg’s (1995) ‘I
have /I am/ I can’ framework can be used by educators to help each individual learner pinpoint
support in their immediate community (‘I have~’), inner strengths (‘I am~’), and abilities (‘I can~’).
She also mentioned Soto’s version: the ‘I have~’ / ‘I will have~’ model, which she describes below:
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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1):LD SIG Grant Awardees’ Reports

Judith O’Loughlin (JO): Mary Soto of the Department of Teacher Education at Cal State East
Bay University, California did it when she was teaching high school. She uses a lot of her ideas fromwhen she taught high school to work with pre-service teachers. So that they can visually see what
the strengths are that they have right now and how they will move the things they don’t have yet
into the ‘I will have’ area. Using visuals is important. It's not just cerebral but seeing things. So in
your life you think about all these things you need to do. For me, making lists of things I have to doand moving them from what I have to do to I've done them, that visual helps me a lot.
Gretchen Clark (GC): I like the way you frame it so it's positive. There's nothing ‘I can't’ do. It is‘I will’ be able to do this and it implies that I can't do it right now, but there's a hope when you
frame it that way.
JO: Yes and you want to do that. I mean you do that with your own children, your spouse or
your significant other. You're always encouraging them. You're praising them for what they've doneand you're looking forward to being able to do, their being able to do more.
GC: Right. So at the end of the day to be resilient you can't really focus on what you can't do.
You just have to push forward.
Later in the interview, after recounting a personal story about how she handled her father’s
hospitalization and struggle with heart disease, we discussed the stressors she experienced withbalancing her desire to be by his side but also care for her children. Armed with coloring books andcrayons, she took her children to the hospital and accomplished both: Her children participated in
his care by drawing him pictures. It was then she realized that a potentially negative situation had
seamlessly turned into a positive for everyone involved. She remarked, “The positive is what makes
you become resilient. Not looking at something from the negatives.” This personal story helped meunderstand the powerful connection between positive thinking and resilience.
Using Soto’s model, it would be easy for a classroom EFL teacher to encourage students to thinkpositively about their L2 learning by having them reflect on and pinpoint strengths skills or abilities
they already possess. Drawing attention to these positives and providing opportunities to practiceand excel, with guided reflection included, could be integral to the promotion of resilience. It
could be a useful reflective tool to use at the beginning and end of the term as a way for learners
to track changes in their development. I like how the model forces students to consider what they
already have in their life that is a support (‘I have ~’), but also invites them to envision their future
support system (‘I will have~’).
In my classroom, I might change the model to ‘Now’ / ‘At the end of the term’ and havestudents focus on abilities. I feel the ‘Now’/’At the end of the term’ phrasing would still capture
the essence of the model but also make the meaning more concrete for my lower proficiency
students. It also seems fitting to keep the model centered on learning topics rather than any
personal issues as some students may not want to share information with classmates about theirhome lives.
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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): LD SIG Grant Awardees’ Reports
For example, at the beginning of a course, my students could make a poster outlining theircurrent perceptions of their English abilities (‘Now’). They might note the skills they are mostproud of, highlight recent episodes of language learning
Now…
success, or describe any abilities on the ‘Now’ side. On the ‘At
the end of the term’ side, they might write any language
learning goals or abilities they hope to hone. The students could
share their ideas with each other as a relationship building
activity. Then, the poster could be revisited midway through theterm and again at the end to help each student track her/his language learning progress. As part ofa portfolio, this activity may prove to be a simple, concrete, yet effective, way for students andteacher to get at the heart of who each student is and who they want to be. In the end, the poster
created during activity might well serve as an excellent multimodal account of L2 progress andhelp foster resilience should any learning stumbling blocks occur.
Another way teachers could cultivate resilience is by providing emotional support. Judy spoke at
length about the importance of teachers getting to know students and their families. Cultivating
trust with all members of a learner’s support system helps build communities where young people
feel safe to grow. Here she related a story of a primary school age Korean child and her family that
had immigrated to her community in California and the obstacles she faced as the girl’s ESL
teacher:
JO: They lived across the street from the school. The mother was the chief caretaker. Thefather was very busy with business. Their daughter was literally afraid to speak and she did not talkfor almost three years. She didn't talk in the classroom. She didn't answer questions. By the middleof the second year it was apparent that she had gained a lot of receptive language and that she
really understood what was going on in the classroom.
And observed on the playground, the young girl could interact with minimal language with otherkids. The mother also was so worried about her and that made this cycle of ‘the mom's worried andso the kid was anxious and then she didn't speak’. In that situation I went with the mother to asocial worker and talked about how we can help the mother stop enabling her daughter to besilent.
GC: So as a teacher what were you doing in your classroom to make, to try to get her to speak?
JO: I paired her with another student when we had activities and so they worked together.
GC: Yes, at least in the university I find that all of the onus is not on me to make my students
resilient. I think they get a lot of support from their classmates. It's what they say to each other. Inmy discussion classes we practice "Oh that's a good idea", which gives the other person confidence
to speak up more.

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1):LD SIG Grant Awardees’ Reports

JO: I think they do that in elementary school too. Of course, it depends on the classroom
teacher and also the ESL teacher but if you can create the idea of a community, a community
together, I think it's a really big thing.
While I don’t have contact with my students’ families, classroom community building is possible
and could promote resilience. To me, honoring both the successes and failures of a learner in a safe
atmosphere is a practice that would benefit learners. Connected to this, Judy described a ‘morning
meeting’ activity in which both teacher and students begin the day by conversing with each otherabout any worries or stresses they may be feeling. This activity could humanize classroom
relationships and thereby create a safe classroom environment where students cultivate
confidence. I recently tried this simple activity with a small upper intermediate Speaking class at a
women’s university. I participated as well, relating some stressors I had experienced that morning
getting my five-year old to daycare on time. We all had a good laugh and I felt better equipped tostart a long day of teaching. I remember feeling how wonderful it was to connect on a personallevel with the students before any serious language learning tasks had begun.
In sum, as I revisit my discussion with Judy, I am struck with how important resilience is for ourdaily lives both in and out of the classroom. While sometimes hard to practice, with support fromothers and a positive attitude, we can and will succeed in some capacity. The end result may notmaterialize as one imagines, but in the end we are stronger and better equipped to handle any
kind of hurdle. Finally, as a main adult figure in a student’s life, it is important for teachers toprovide a place for exploration of the self, help learners learn from mistakes and ultimately
cultivate a sense of resilience and drive to tackle any obstacle, be it connected with learning orotherwise.
I want to thank Judy for taking the time to sit and discuss her ideas with me for this grant report.
And also a big thank you to the Learner Development SIG for offering the grant and enabling me toattend the conference.

Reference
Grotberg, E. (1995). A guide to promoting resilience in children: Strengthening the human spirit.
The Hague, Netherlands: Bernard van Leer Foundation. Retrieved from https://bibalex.org/
baifa/Attachment/Documents/115519.pdf What I learned from my first conference

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