Resilience – “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties”;
“the ability of a substance to spring back into shape”;
“elasticity”; “adaptability”; bouncebackability”; “buoyancy”.
One of the first aims of THRIVE is to build resilience in us as Zimbabwean educators. Teaching is challenging enough, then throw in the challenges of Zimbabwe. We are getting less bendy, less elastic, less buoyant. We’re taking longer to recover from the difficulties of the term as every day has more than is a normal share of challenges.
It is important to be honest about when we aren’t coping and to also be sensitive enough to observe when our colleagues are not coping.
The poem below was written on 24/02/18 as part of a challenge to write a poem with the title, “Collage” and to include a line from a published poet in the creation.
Collage
Happiness floats
Hope flies
Our lives are a collage of collected stories-
Here - look- yours touches mine.
Not waving but drowning * -
Be careful;
Ten cuidado;
Chenjera;
Faites attention.
Be kind ...
Tread slowly and softly,
Lest you mis-
understand
mis-take
miss the cry of one human heart to be
connected to another-
An assemblage of the divine.
*Line from poem by Stevie Smith
I learnt about mood trackers from my Grade 7 class – the aim is to become more self reflective about our most frequent moods. This in turn should help us be more aware of the reasons behind our own moods and the moods of our colleagues. We will hopefully acknowledge that if we are feeling discouraged and soul weary, that the person sitting next to us could well be feeling the same.
It’s not only about negative, heavy moods, but start by acknowledging the moods that you don’t like but you find yourself experiencing more frequently than you really want to admit.
And then consider the good moods and the moods you would like to have more often and also create an awareness that allows others to experience their joy even if it does not at that moment coincide with yours. But know that yours will come too.
Do it for what’s left of the month of the holidays and a month of the new term. See what you discover. Here’s another example.
Follow this link I found for a more comprehensive explanation.
https://www.sweetplanit.com/home/2018/3/10/bullet-journal-mood-mandalas
ThriveZim Education 