The Educator's Guide to Building Child & Family Resilience

by Michele Myers, Linda Mayes

Overview

Drawing on research by the Yale Child Study Center, Mayes and Myers show us how trauma affects the developing brain and share classroom‑based strategies that use the power of students' and families' own stories to promote social-emotional well-being. Educators learn ways to leverage this student-focused, story-centered work to build key literacy skills.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338839449
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/11/2023
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	5 - 11 Years

About the Author

Michele Myers, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University. As a holistic, social justice educator, Dr. Myers is committed to ensuring that all children receive a humanizing education that honors their histories, heritages, literacies, languages, cultures, family structures, and communities as assets for learning. Dr. Myers recently coauthored Revolutionary Love (Scholastic, 2020) with Kamania Wynter-Hoyt, Eliza Braden, Sanjuana Rodriguez, and Natasha Thornton.

Linda Mayes, M.D. is a developmental pediatrician in the Yale School of Medicine where she leads the Yale Child Study Center. Her scholarly work focuses on the impact of early adversity on children's development and on building programs to support skill development promoting resilience. An author of numerous scholarly articles, Mayes is also the author of The Educator’s Guide to Understanding Child Development (Scholastic, 2020).

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2024

Relying on research from the Yale Child Study Center, the authors explore what resilience is and how elementary educators can support their students in developing it. They begin with a metaphor, explaining and illustrating resilience as a scale in which negative experiences and positive supports counterbalance one another to produce either positive or negative outcomes. It follows, then, that educators can offer positive supports to help balance the scale and "shift the fulcrum." The authors emphasize that resilience is not a fixed, internal trait, but rather a complex network of skills and capacities, including developing strong relationships, forming positive self-identities, building curiosity and motivation, engaging in flexible thinking, and demonstrating altruism. The book examines each of these capacities in turn, providing anecdotes and examples from educators, offering book recommendations for grades K–5, and sharing routines and activities for the classroom. While some of the suggested titles and activities tread familiar ground, Myers and Mayes frame their discussion in a nuanced, accessible way. VERDICT A useful introductory text; for a more in-depth look at trauma-informed practices, try Alex Shevrin Venet's Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education.—Lauren Strohecker

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