Well, our 21-day Gratitude Challenge is officially underway – After one day of posts, we have some data to share for our group!

It will be interesting to see how this progresses throughout the next 21 days!! 35 posts on day one! People can post to the group journal space or to their private space. Read more about the activity at an earlier post

Here’s the group’s final data. It was a good experience especially through the holidays to be reminded to stop and say thanks for all the many good things!

Thanks to Jackie Schwab at Mont Alto for making me aware of this opportunity through UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center! For the last three weeks of the semester (November 27th – December 15) anyone interested may participate in a joint gratitude journal exercise.

A tremendous thanks goes out to Kristy Hove for coordinating the Lehigh Valley participation and to the 200+ faculty and students in the HDFS first-year experience courses at LV who participated in the project!!! Two sessions were offered on Friday November 10th – one on the value of group and informal student-to-student support and the other open session for the campus with a general overview of resilience and strategies to help students build up inner resources and navigate challenges.

Power of Student-Student Support
For the group support session, I focused on activities to set a peaceful environment and build awareness and connection between students in the class as follows: Awareness Meter *, Fast Friends *, Inclusion of Other in Self Scale*, Friendly Wishes for Each Other *, Anchor Breathing, Fortune Teller *, and Taking in the Good*

We used as a guiding principle the research by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson and researchers in her PEP lab at UNC Chapel Hill on positivity resonance, a very powerful approach to making connections. According to her research, if we share positive emotions with another which generate feelings of mutual care, we can derive a plethora of benefits including better mental and physical health and resilience, among others.

We ended the session with a series of reflective exercises: QICS (Question, Insight, Connection, Surprise), Setting an Intention (As a result of the session, I would like to continue to do…), Generating Mutual Care (answer 2 questions – In order to support your classmates, what would you be willing to do… In order to feel supported, you’d like your classmates to do… for you), and finally, students filled out a card with a friendly and encouraging wish for themselves. They placed it in a sealed, self-addressed envelope which I’ll mail to them by finals week.

Building Inner Resources and Strategies to Build Resilience

In the large open session for the campus, I started with a general overview of resilience and the important fact that our levels of resilience can change. With the proper support and good strategies that help us grow stronger internally and deal effectively with issues as they arise, we can become more resilient as we work through our daily challenges. Students received the strategies bag and we alternated between information on building resilience and practicing strategies.

It was a great day, and I’m grateful to Kristy Hove and the HDFS FYS faculty and students for making it such a wonderful experience!

Handouts and the presentations are available at this link.

Resources

Awareness Meter, Friendly Wishes (Mindful Games; 2016, Greenland, S.)

Fast Friends (https://rascl.berkeley.edu/uploads/page-gould_2008_journal_of_personality_and_social_psychology.pdf)

Fortune Teller – Hope Labs – https://www.slideshare.net/hopelab/wizbiz-fortune-teller-how-to-13153534

Fredrickson, B.L., (2013), Love 2.0. Plume, New York, NY.

Inclusion of Other in Self Scale (http://ww3.haverford.edu/psychology/ble/continuous_ios/originalios.html)

Taking in the Good – Rick Hanson – http://www.rickhanson.net/take-in-the-good/

Just had a really wonderful session on resilience with 27 of our Penn State York awesome Lion Ambassadors! We may not think that the high achievers also need to strengthen their levels of resilience, but in fact, these are a group of students who may hold hidden at-risk factors. They are very used to doing well in school, and at some point in college, they experience their first class that is challenging, or their first lower grade on an assignment or test and can quickly lose confidence and a sense of self-efficacy.

Carol Dweck’s research on growth/fixed mindset can come into play here. If students have been praised over time for how well they do in school, they may start to believe that quality is a fixed aspect of personality rather than something that can grow with hard work and/or new approaches. If their grades start to “slip” they may think that the earlier appraisal of their levels of intelligence may have been “wrong” and maybe they aren’t as “smart” as people thought they were. Instead, Dweck describes a different way to think about ourselves as learners – namely that we can grow beyond the current level of ability in any area that we pursue – with effort and persistence, we can improve. We may be struggling in organic chemistry, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t “smart”. Being “smart”, according to Dweck, means having a growth mindset that says, “With hard work and good support, I can learn more than I know right now!”

These students can also put too much pressure on themselves inside and out of the classroom – juggling classes, work, family & friends, and co-curriculars. Our approach to building resilience in this project means working through the challenges, but also learning to thrive – that means taking time to be healthy (in mind, body, and emotions), finding balance, and working on building positive emotions, beneficial relationships, and learning to manage stress levels.

We worked on several techniques and strategies together that I hope simply reinforced the idea that it’s important to care for ourselves everyday so that when the challenges come (and they will!), we are more prepared to face them!