Can Elementary Teachers Explicitly Teach the Concept of “Adversity” to their Students?

By Rick Jetter, Ph.D.

     What if I told you that there is a gap in Character Education programs that have historically been administered to students in schools across the nation?  What if I told you that there is also a gap in the Emotional Intelligence (EI/EQ) research that is currently in the field of psychology and education and how we apply adversity training to student learning today?
     So, why is adversity important and what types of adversity exist in our students’ lives that you can help them tackle or cope with while also preparing them to proactively deal with any adverse situation no matter what age they are?  Think about your own life right now.  What adversities existed in your life since you were 5 years old?  10 years old?  16 years old?  21 years old?  And NOW?
     Take a look at this video and can you honestly say that YOUR students would know how to handle this kind of adversity without FREAKING out like the woman whose car was vandalized did?

Maybe this will help even more:

Adversity training is needed for students to learn how to deal with the following 6 kinds of adversity, including (but not limited to):

1.  Physical Adversity

2.  Mental Adversity

3.  Emotional Adversity

4.  Social Adversity

5.  Spiritual Adversity

6.  Financial Adversity

From those types of adversities, there are event subgroupings that are often neglected and are often experienced by not only our youth, but by adults no matter their age:

1.  Loss of a pet or loved one.

2.  Not achieving what they thought they would.

3.  Financial loss.

4.  Job loss.

5.  Illness/disease.

6.  Dealing with others when they suffer adversity (many do not know how to continue being friends or supportive of others during their time of adversity).

7.  Stress as a result of opposition or conflict.

8.  Addiction.

9.  Dealing with geographical disasters.

10.  Dealing with accidents.

From there, we can certainly “prevail” as human beings under pressure by living gracefully, living with gratitudes, living mindfully, and living with skills that emotionally healthy human beings possess--especially when we see how this weather man deals with adversity due to technical malfunctions within his meteorological newscast in Arizona:

Adversity training = grace under pressure for your students for the rest of their lives.

See you at NCAEE 2017 for Dr. Rick Jetter’s presentation: Teaching Adversity in Our Schools where you can learn more about how to not only prepare students for the next grade level, but how you can prepare students for life!

Rick Jetter, Ph.D., is currently a national educational consultant, author, speaker, trainer, and partner at Pushing Boundaries Consulting: http://www.pushboundconsulting.com 

Rick previously worked as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools prior to becoming the Director of K-12 Education for the AEP Group which can be found at www.aepk12.com.  You can also find out more information about Rick by visiting www.rickjetter.com.  On Twitter, you will find him at @RickJetter.