Overview
Resilience Advocate (RA’s) are the liaison between the school and TeacherCoach, serving as motivational ambassadors for well-being. RA’s are well respected members of the school community embarking on this leadership role to improve agency for individual and organizational health, reducing the burden on administration. RA’s will be trained and supported to help with accountability, engagement, and program sustainability.
Training
RA’s will participate in a nine- month training program during their first year. The training will be fun and interactive, benefiting the RA personally and professionally. RA’s are asked to attend seven sessions virtually, from 2:30-3:30pm (shifted up or down by 30 minutes) the second Tuesday of each month. RA’s will also have in-person, email and phone contact with the TC staff. The schedule is in your virtual calendar.
The first part of each training is a practical discussion around the use of TC technology including the Dynamic Assessment Tool Analytics (DATA) and messaging system. Best practices are developed to facilitate their peers. Faculty rewards for each school be planned and implemented based on realistic expectations and successive approximation (a form of shaping). The second part of each training is a clinical discussion, exploring the nine factors of resilience, the art of facilitation, resistance, and motivation.
Selecting Your RA
Each school will have one main representative and one alternate. The investment of these individuals will have a direct correlation with the engagement of the entire faculty in personal growth work. The process can be self-selection, nomination, or faculty voting. If the district has a wellness committee, that may make the selection process easier. This person will need to be mindful of confidentiality and be sensitive with informational trends for the organization as a whole. Reliability is key.
Responsibilities and Benefits
RA’s are the heath ambassadors to the school, promoting TC services, mentoring, coaching, training, rewarding, and holding faculty accountable. In this inaugural year of the program, RA’s will be interviewed for the portal vlog, available to all districts. They may also participate in the creation of a new engagement series on resilience which will be gifted to your district. RA’s may be included in research articles and a book. will be the first to pilot this program, likely involving future research and public speaking opportunities. RA’s chief benefits are advanced learning, respect from colleagues and networking with other educators. Small stipends, gifts, and a year- end celebration will also be offered.
Resilience
- Needs
- Protective Mechanisms
- Support/ Relationships
- Adaptability
- Stress
- Wellness
- Skills (PSEL)
- School Climate
- Values
Our bandwidth for distress is comprised of these 9 related factors and similar to the RAM of a computer, higher levels allow for accomplishing more in less time, with quicker recovery. As we become more efficient and effective at work or home, the more likely we are to achieve our goals. Higher stability, quicker recovery from adversity, and an overall sense of well-being are all rewards from this complex work of growing more resilient, which we call Prosilience.
The aim of our work at TC is improving awareness, both for the individual and system to realize the obstacles to success. With greater appreciation for the etiology of our dis-ease we may become more intentional about how our energy is directed toward acceptance and change (and the the type of change).
As your entire faculty explore these nine areas of resilience, we are simultaneously training the RA's with more in-depth learning to become effective peer advocates.The curriculum will include definitions of these nine facets, exercises to heighten our awareness and facilitation skills including motivating, dealing with resistance, promoting, and comforting.
Needs: The 9 building blocks for psychological health, different from wants. The degree to which each need exists and is met, depends upon our early life experience and current situation. The other eight factors of resilience ultimately impact the degree to which our needs are met. This is the foundation upon all other resilience work is built.
Protective Mechanisms: The intentional and unintentional methods by which we insulate ourselves from real and perceived threats. Many of our protective mechanisms are formed at an early age, modelled by our parents, operating outside our everyday consciousness. As we grow our awareness for these protective mechanisms, we can be better prepared to limit their use in the service of better meeting our needs. The more we use these protective mechanisms, the less likely we are to put energy into getting our needs met.
Support/ Relationships: The (mainly) human connections we make to help us get our needs met or endure unpleasantness. The better we learn how to identify, express and negotiate our wants/needs, the more likely we will feel quality support from those who are close to us. The type of support we offer and receive will improve with greater contact, the process by which we deeply engage with another.
Adaptability: Our capacity for distress is the greatest determinant in tolerating unmet needs or overcoming adversity. Flexibility in how our needs can be met, elasticity in creatively meeting these needs and the iterations we make when needs/ resources are scarce, are all part of our ability to adapt. How we rebound from adversity, is influenced by our personality, our attitude, the lens through which we view the world, our schema, and adjustments we make to our expectations. Our ability to adapt is also impacted by our health, stress levels and creativity in problem solving. 
Stress: The level of arousal from internal and external stimuli generating somatic tension and unpleasant thoughts. Optimal arousal levels motivate us to act, but acute and chronic tension states can trigger psychological and physiological changes to our body that make it harder to get our needs met. Nearly everything impacts our stress, from our PSEL skills to our mindset. Our capacity to tolerate discomfort and the tools we learn for self-regulation (i.e. self-soothing) significantly help reduce unnecessary stress.
Wellness: The tools, skills and strategies we employ to meet our physiological needs (health), improving vitality, preventing injury and promoting immunity. Our energy level from good nutrition, sleep, exercise, and mindfulness can help generate peace, lowering our arousal levels to promote restoration. Our overall sense of well-being is a combination of brain, body, and spirit, inversely proportional for most people with stress levels. 
Skills (PSEL): The 15 psychosocial emotional tools by which we learn to get our needs met. PSEL is developmental in nature, evolving with experience. Equity is an important element of PSEL because the underlying needs are not all met to the same degree, shaping how we learn to negotiate and adapt. Our skills are taught, modelled, intrinsically motivated, and externally rewarded by our environment. 
Climate: Trust, safety, effort, creativity, fun and other factors influencing and creating milieu. One of three dimensions of school culture, influencing organizational health, representing the intangible feeling we get in a classroom or school. Skills such as communication, intimacy and conflict resolution on a larger scale, also impact the class or school climate. We have less control over the larger areas, requiring more advanced skills to impact this factor.
Values: The principles we hold as important for how we live our lives, influencing how we interact with others. Being generous is a value determined by our priorities of wants/needs. Our ideal for which needs are most critical, what wants we hold as rewarding, and what actions we take to make this happen determines our values. Different from a moral or a construct, values are not imperatives for how we believe others ‘should’ live or judgments about how people act, but a measure of self-accountability. Growing both hope and courage are universal constants to consider prioritizing.