Waitakere Adult Literacy has run their first seven-week free Wellbeing and Resilience course. Tutor Jacqui Tisch explains why she offered to run the course – and what the learners are saying.

From 1999–2018 I assisted at a social skills programme for young people who found the world, and especially school life challenging.

I found myself asking the very same questions that the young people I worked with were confronted with: “How long is it going to take me to recover from this setback?” “What strategies can I use to recover?”

As the young people on the programme were told: “You have to know what to do when you don’t know what to do.”

I began to study the neurobiology of what is going on in our nervous systems when we are trying to protect ourselves from threat and danger. What I discovered helped me to understand that my stress response does not mean that there is something wrong with me – it is because my brain is wired to be good at stress.

I also discovered that there are many things we can do to navigate our way back to a sense of feeling safe and connected and all the associated benefits of experiencing life from this place.

I learned that: with practice I could grow my ability to recover from setbacks and stress more effectively and in less time; and whatever strategies you practise during stress, you teach the body to do spontaneously. (McGonigal. K The Upside of Stress.)

Many of the adults I work with at Literacy Waitakere found school challenging and often carry much anxiety, shame and a fear of failure with regard to their ability to read and write.

Introducing strategies to enable people to read to understand and write to communicate is one aspect of literacy learning. Equally important is introducing strategies to enable people to navigate the stress and anxiety that can become very real obstacles to progressing learning – particularly outside of the literacy learning environment. With these strategies adult literacy learners shift how they see themselves from: “I am a person who can’t” to, “I am a person who can,” with many areas of their daily lives.

Within lessons we learn about what’s going on in our nervous system when we’re stressed and reacting and how to shift this very real stress response. This understanding is motivating for all of us to consciously take that one small step, that achievable thing we can do, to recover from our setbacks, rather than getting stuck in our emotional reaction. To be able to say to ourselves: “I’ll do this because this is what I do in situations like this.”

I’ve found talking about this in sessions has made a huge difference in the learners’ lives. They’ve said:

“I am now able to get out of my negative thinking and reset when it’s a difficult day.”

“If I have something intense going on I know how to refocus. I don’t get so overwhelmed by what’s expected of me.”

“I’ve learned what I can do to take a break and destress.”

“I’m more assertive and am not afraid to ask questions when I don’t understand things anymore.”

“I have a better understanding of how our brain is wired and I now have new tools and perspectives.”

This article was first published in Literacy Waitakere’s March 2021 Newsletter.