Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The Buffalo Public School District is highlighting a growing effort to make resilience a greater priority in the school's curriculum for young people, schools, and communities.
As students returned to the classroom on Thursday, an initiative developed by local resilience and mental health speaker Duncan Kirkwood in partnership with Congressman Tim Kennedy was celebrated with the National Day of Resilience, which has received support from the local and national level too.
"We have partnered with local municipalities, so we have a proclamation from the Town of Amherst, we have a proclamation from the Montgomery, Ala. County Commission in recognition, we have a proclamation from the Erie County Legislature. And, of course, Congressman Kennedy's office has helped bring this to life," said Kirkwood while visiting Harriet Ross Tubman School along Stanton Street in Buffalo's East Side neighborhood.
National Day of Resilience in the United States of America has been entered into the records of the United States Congress by Kennedy, and will now be celebrated every Sept. 3.
Kirkwood understands how much young people can struggle with resilience, and he feels students need to create awareness around mental toughness and around mental health. And now, a significant expansion of resilience education is set to take place for students not just within Buffalo Public Schools, but also throughout Western New York.
"Our Erie County District Legislator Taisha St. Jean Tard purchased my virtual resilience curriculum for all of the 36,000 students in Buffalo Public Schools. So every single student will get this vetted curriculum-based out of positive psychology research from the University of Pennsylvania, based on military research, based on the work we do at Villa Maria around the Center for Resiliency. So they can build their resilient skills to persevere and be the best version of themselves throughout this school year," Kirkwood said.
The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has also sponsored access to the curriculum for Catholic schools across Western New York. Cattaraugus and Allegany BOCES has also purchased the curriculum for all of the schools in Cattaraugus and Allegany counties, and they've been using it all summer long with their schools.
"Some of their schools are doing it every day, a video, and the kids are loving it and excited about it. And then some of them are using one here-or-there to bolster the work that they're already doing. It's just another tool that the schools can use to support the work that is already going on in our schools," Kirkwood noted.
The virtual curriculum provides students with practical tools focused on resilience, grit, emotional regulation, confidence, responding to challenges, and developing a stronger mindset.
"The curriculum is 25 video, they're 5-to-7 minutes each on different facets of resilience," Kirkwood said. "There's a video on forgiveness, there's a video on self-love, there's a video on positive self-talk. There's video on overcoming setbacks, trying new things. All of the kind of things that factor into helping build a person's resilience, their self-love, their self-worth, so they believe they can do things. And they also have skills to do them."
In addition, each video has an activity associated that will then be integrated into a lesson.
"One of the videos is about journaling and the power of how that can help you release those emotions, because we know our students need to work with an emotional regulation. So then the activity is journal for five days, and then the teacher gets discussion questions on what to ask them about their experience, about what did they learn, what they liked, what they didn't like," Kirkwood explained.
Taking pride as a former student within the Buffalo Public School District, Kirkwood hopes his curriculum can speak to help students know they have greatness inside, and help them know they are capable of accomplishing anything.
"Everything else is already there. They've got tutors, they got reading coaches, they got school psychologists, they got social workers, they got speech therapists. They've got all of these things, but if a person doesn't believe in themselves, none of that matters. If a person doesn't believe they could be anything more than the neighborhood they grew up in, or anything more than a corner boy or a dope boy, then nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how good the school is if the kids don't believe they could be anything. So my hope is the curriculum will push them in that way to see they can be great, that they have greatness in them. That they have talent, that they're unique and special and beautiful, and they have all this potential."
Buffalo Public Schools interim superintendent Dr. Ebony Prophet-Bullock is very supportive of the resiliency curriculum being integrated at all grade levels this year. She feels this curriculum can be beneficial for more than just the students in the classroom.
"As educators, we often learn as much from our students as we try to teach them. What I think is just so wonderful about this curriculum is that as the teacher, the principal, the school social worker, as they are implementing the curriculum with our students, they can't unhear it as well," said Prophet-Bullock on Thursday. "They're hearing the videos, they're watching the videos. Many of the teachers and leaders, they will also be doing the activities. So what I think is it will help us as a community move forward."
Following the turmoil within the district and the Buffalo School Board this summer, Prophet-Bullock feels there are specific topics within the resiliency curriculum that can greatly benefit leaders within the district.
"The curriculum of a piece around forgiveness, we are in a place right now where we need to have forgiveness for each other, and we need to do some repairing. I can't wait for that module to be rolled out because it will be significant not just for our students, but for our entire school system and community," she said. "The one around positive self-talk - one of the things that we have to do as a community is we have to speak positively about our community and about the resources we have and about our school system. So this is one of the tools."
The hope for this curriculum is also for the parents and guardians of students within the district to get involved.
"We're still planning that part out, but I do know schools are waiting and can't wait to see the curriculum," Prophet-Bullock noted. "I can see that this curriculum and having the modules be implemented in our Saturday academies and our family centers, on back to school nights where our social workers or our school support teams can have a room where they are playing the videos and having parents and community members participate in the writing activities and the reading. There's multiple ways of how we can get this filtered all the way down to our families and communities."
"We know that young people struggle with resilience, and we need to create awareness around mental toughness, around mental health" - Duncan Kirkwood
"We know that young people struggle with resilience, and we need to create awareness around mental toughness, around mental health" - Duncan Kirkwood
