Adapting and Implementing a School-Based Resilience-Building Curriculum Among Low-Income Racial and Ethnic Minority Students

Abstract

Although youth are at risk for exposure to adversity and trauma, many youth, especially ethnic and racial minorities, do not have access to mental health care. Resilience-building curriculums can teach important internal resilience skills and provide support to students who may not receive prevention or treatment services. We adapted a resilience curriculum initially used for military-connected youth facing adversities related to parental wartime deployments, to meet the needs of low-income, predominantly racial and ethnic minority students in a large urban school district. In this article we describe the cultural adaptation, the implementation process, and the evaluation of the trauma-informed resilience curriculum using pre-post surveys and focus group discussions. We found significantly improved overall internal resilience scores, as well as significantly improved scores on subscales of problem solving and empathy among students receiving the curriculum. The focus groups revealed that the curriculum enhanced connections among students, as well as students and teachers, and served as a way to destigmatize mental health issues. The acceptability of the curriculum, as well as implementation successes and challenges are described. We provide suggestions for future steps for school psychologists and school social workers for implementing this curriculum.

Keywords: Coping skills; Prevention; Resilience; School; Stress; Trauma-informed.