The Art of Resilience

Trauma is, according to Merriam-Webster, "a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury." Even before COVID-19, research has indicated that 90% of people may experience some kind of trauma at some point in life. Traumatic experiences often lead to mental health issues related to post-traumatic stress.

COVID-19 has utterly upended normal and shows no signs of letting up. My teacher friends and I are all pretty much in agreement on one thing: many of our students are undergoing serious trauma in this moment. Scouring the news, education publications, and social media only reinforces this truth. 

In spite of the ubiquity of traumatic events in society, many people not only endure them but emerge from the experiences even stronger. Part of the explanation for this outcome is the concept of resilience. 

Resilience is an important idea that has surrendered some of the social-emotional spotlight to its close relative, "grit," in recent years. What, exactly, is resilience? Andrea Ovans in Harvard Business Review defines it as "the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity." Joan Cheverie of Educause Review writes that resilience is "the ability to withstand, recover, and bounce back amid stress, chaos, and ever-changing circumstances." 

The benefits of resilience may seem obvious, but also under-appreciated. Resilience, according to the Mayo Clinic, "won't make your problems go away," but "can give you the ability to see past them, find enjoyment in life and better handle stress." Further, Harvard Health Publishing purports that resilience is "associated with longevity, lower rates of depression, and greater satisfaction with life." 

The state in which I live and work, New Jersey, just this week canceled all on-campus schooling for the rest of this school year due to the public health crisis. This news, though seemingly inevitable to me, is nonetheless traumatic to students and teachers alike. I look at the trauma my students are experiencing (especially the youngest students and the high school seniors), and I wish them nothing more than the resilience to see past the very real problems of our moment, handle the associated stress, and find enjoyment in their lives. This enjoyment is ripe for the picking, if these young people can somehow find the fruit among the thicket. 

Due to COVID-19, the future of arts education is so uncertain. For the same reason, it is so very necessary. The arts are some of the only places young people can find joy, solace, and belonging in times of great disruption. Not only that, but the arts have been demonstrated to develop the resilience necessary to muddle through this crisis - and maybe even come out stronger on the other side. A group of Australian researchers aggregated a number of studies on the effect of arts-based activities on resilience in young people:

Whether through direct experiences of working with arts practice or exploring arts-based methods for meaning making and communication, these studies have shown both significant and diverse impacts on young people’s capacity to develop and maintain resilience and a sense of personal health and wellbeing. Underpinning the research that advocates for arts’ engagement as capacity building and a means for bolstering young people’s resilience and well being are investigations that have demonstrated how arts’ multi-modality and ways of knowing support the engagement necessary to cultivate positive mindsets, confidence and competence in young people... The arts and other ways of knowing and being can assist people in feeling safe and supported (McDonald et al., 2020, p. 35).

Some of the many ways the arts does this work is by giving young people agency, control, and a feeling of belonging to something greater than themselves:

(W)orking with and in arts-based activities can be enormously engaging and satisfying for young people and it is this capacity to “stimulate a desire to create, express hidden wishes, and relieve tension” that makes arts-based methods and interventions attractive and inclusive for young people from diverse backgrounds. Further to the arts capacity to embrace, include and receive people, James describes the enjoyment it can create that keeps young people emotionally receptive and open to positive messages about self and other (McDonald et al., 2020, p. 35).

The arts can also help imbue young people with a sense of purpose, which supports perspective, confidence, and self-worth. This was demonstrated in a 2017 British study of the effect of arts activities on children's well-being:

Increased confidence came from feeling valued, being treated like an adult, overcoming challenges, and having a purpose. In addition the longitudinal study by Martin et al found that engagement in arts engagement most significantly predicted a sense of meaning/purpose in life (Zarobe & Bungay, 2017, p. 345).

These effects can be even more pronounced for children with mental health complexities or learning difficulties:

Prior research reports that participation in appropriately structured and supported visual arts activity can help people understand themselves better and cope with difficult feelings. The art therapy literature provides a qualitative evidence base for this claim; for example, studies have shown how arts activities can help with externalising difficult thoughts, and with the recovery from mental health difficulty. Other research with those who experience mental health complexities and learning difficulties has also found a reduction in the occurrence of behaviours associated with mental illness, and increases in personally expressive behaviours, as a result of participating in visual arts activity. Arts activities were also found to aid adolescents in developing their sense of identity, as well as preserving their autonomy, by giving them a sense of mastery and control (MacPherson, Hart, & Heaver, 2016, p. 546).

A group of Canadian and American researchers set about testing this theory with children in disaster recovery scenarios - which, frankly, is not unlike the trauma our students are facing right now. Their findings were obvious to those of us who work in arts education every day, and have been made even more obvious in the COVID-19 era:

• Youth are affected by disasters in many of the same ways as adults are affected; however, young people also have unique and specific needs for youth-friendly spaces, processes, and opportunities that are often overlooked in the recovery process.
• Youth who live through disasters experience many changes in their lives— some difficult, others quite positive. The long-term effects of disasters continue to unfold during the recovery period, but many youth find creative ways to adapt and respond.
• Youth have the capacity to help their community during and after a disaster. They also often desire to help youth in other communities who have experienced a disaster.
• Youth are creative and passionate. It is important to open up spaces for them to express themselves in the ways that are most comfortable for them (Fletcher et al., 2016, p. 158).

Resilience is just as valuable for arts educators as it is for their students. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, we do not have much of an idea of what our lives are going to look like next school year. Many are frightened that, just like tens of millions of other Americans, our jobs may be on the chopping block. These thoughts, though certainly understandable, aren't quite helpful. Cheverie notes that "(n)egative emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, distress, helplessness, and hopelessness decrease your ability to solve the problems, and they weaken your resiliency." Resilient people "remain positive and can cope well with high levels of ongoing, disruptive change by being flexible and by figuring out a new way of working when the old or current way is no longer possible." 

Assuming it is obvious that resilience is a beneficial trait to acquire and develop, is it as simple as flicking a switch? Is it something we are born with, or a muscle group that can be exercised and strengthened? The truth is it is probably a bit of both, but the Mayo Clinic offers five tips to improve resilience:

1. Get connected. Some like-minded colleagues and I have started a Facebook group called "Music Educators - Looking Ahead," which has amassed nearly 1,000 members in less than a week. One reason the group has grown so quickly is that people are looking for guidance about how their professional lives are going to look for the foreseeable future. But I believe the primary reason is that connection feeds resilience. It is much easier to face the many challenges life brings when you do not feel like you are on your own.
2. Make every day meaningful. As an artist and educator, this is easy to do - as long I remember my "why."
3. Learn from experience. We have never seen anything quite like COVID-19 in our lifetime, but we have all endured many challenges and even traumatic events. The same skill set we used to manage those experiences we can utilize to manage this one.
4. Remain hopeful. This has been the hardest part of the COVID-19 crisis. There is so much bad news, and all of it is at least mostly true, very important, and extremely serious - assuming the source is reliable. My best advice is to try to maintain perspective. The scope and depth of this crisis are unprecedented for most people who are currently living, but humanity has survived much worse many times over throughout history. Another more practical strategy is that I only read news in the morning, and I try not to watch any television news at all.
5. Take care of yourself. My morning runs have been indispensible for forcing myself out of bed at a reasonable hour, maintaining a sense of routine, getting much-needed exercise in a time when I am moving less, finding solitude, a change of scenery, and getting fresh air. I also try to get 7 1/2 - 8 hours of sleep every night. When I get fewer than 7 hours of sleep in even one night, I am irritable, groggy, and lazy. With rest and exercise, I feel like I can tackle just about anything.
6. Be proactive. "Music Educators - Looking Ahead" is all about proactivity. If arts educators sit around waiting for federal, state, or even local guidance, we are doing ourselves, our profession, and our students a disservice. I have already approached my school district leadership about being involved in the planning process for next year, and I have been invited to serve on a statewide task force designed to create templates for what arts education can look like for different districts. As a colleague wrote on the Facebook Group, "I’d rather 'plan' and try to do something about the issues than sit and worry about them." I replied that that sentence is the reason the group exists.

God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. - Serenity Prayer

References

Cheverie, J. (2017, December 4). Building resilience and why it's important to you and your team. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/12/building-resilience-and-why-its-important-to-you-and-your-team

Fletcher, S., Cox, R. S., Scannell, L., Heykoop, C., Tobin-Gurley, J., & Peek, L. (2016). Youth creating disaster recovery and resilience: a multi-site arts-based youth engagement research project. Children, Youth and Environments, 26(1), 148-163.

Harvard Health Publishing. (2017, November). Ramp up your resilience! Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/ramp-up-your-resilience

Macdonald, A., Baguley, M., Barton, G., & Kerby, M. (2020). How arts-based methods are used to support the resilience and well-being of young people: a review of the literature. Arts-Based Research, Resilience and Well-Being Across the Lifespan, 29–46.

Macpherson, H., Hart, A., & Heaver, B. (2016). Building resilience through group visual arts activities: findings from a scoping study with young people who experience mental health complexities and/or learning difficulties. Journal of Social Work, 16(5), 541–560.

Mayo Clinic. (2017, May 18). Resilience: build skills to endure hardship. Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311

Ovans, A. (2020, May 1). What resilience means, and why it matters. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/01/what-resilience-means-and-why-it-matters

Zarobe, L., & Bungay, H. (2017). The role of arts activities in developing resilience and mental wellbeing in children and young people: a rapid review of the literature. Perspectives in Public Health, 137(6), 337–347.