Every child experiences disappointment and failure as he learns and grows, but the way he is helped to respond to these difficult times is key. A resilient child looks at mistakes and disappointments as opportunities to learn, rather than setbacks, and as a result, he approaches life with enthusiasm and confidence. Building resilience is an important part of our work at WSMS.

At WSMS, we:

• encourage children to trust their own powers of reasoning to work through difficult situations. In this way, children gain ownership over their problems, and are willing explore options and find solutions.
• give children many opportunities to experiment and explore, and multiple materials to use in conducting their experiments. As a result, children understand that different strategies can lead to success, and that from disappointment and failure can come new approaches and new ways of seeing the world.
• support the development of competence for children, while understanding that competence may manifest itself in many different ways.

WSMS teachers:

• practice empathy, respect and patience, making children feel safe and protected, and validating their emotions.
• foster self-worth in children by offering them generous and frequent attention. Children learn to believe in themselves and bounce back more easily from disappointment.
• encourage children to express their feelings when they are sad, angry, or anxious, and help them develop skills to manage those feelings in healthy ways.

Here is a how one young student learned to handle the difficulty of separation from her mother:
This little girl did not want her mother to leave after drop-off time. As a result, she was uncommunicative, and when she did interact, it was to disrupt other students’ work. Her teacher noticed, and took her aside. “How can I help you to feel better?” she asked quietly. She stayed with the student, encouraging her to vocalize her feelings. At first, the student merely pouted, but with her teacher’s gentle prodding, she began to talk, and was soon able to offer solutions to her bad mood. Because she came up with solutions on her own, rather than being told by the teacher what to do, the student was more able to take ownership over the situation, enact her solutions with pride, and be more likely to avoid upset in the future. And because of the way WSMS classrooms are set up, the teacher was able to devote dedicated time to her student while the rest of the class remained focused on its work.

“I want to create a classroom where everyone– children, all faculty, and teachers in training—feels secure within themselves and within the environment, so that we can take the risks necessary to grow physically, intellectually, psychologically and socially.” —WSMS Head Teacher, since 1996, with more than twenty years of experience as teacher and teacher educator, currently in WSMS-TEP (our teacher education program)

“We love the way teachers take genuine interest in everything our son shares with them. He feels validated and cared for because they always listen despite his long-winded stories about trains.”—WSMS Parent