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Laura Callen Awarded Fellowship to Advance Student Resilience
BBA English teacher Laura Callen has been awarded a two-year fellowship through the Rowland Foundation to develop an innovative approach to building and measuring student resilience across the school community. The Rowland Foundation’s mission is to invest in Vermont teachers to positively change the culture and climate of schools; each year it awards up to six fellowships to educators across the state.
Callen’s proposal, developed in partnership with BBA academic leadership, reflects both her classroom experience and ongoing doctoral research. She emphasizes that the work is active and purposeful: “[the fellowship] is really like being on special assignment.” Her project grows out of what she has observed in students in recent years, including “Covid-related learning loss, a youth mental health crisis, and then the challenges that we face with technology . . . smartphones, social media, and AI.” Together, she describes these as a “triple threat.”
At the center of her work is academic resilience. As her research shows, “academic resilience is not innate—it’s totally developable. It's a set of habits and skills that can be taught explicitly.”
Callen began researching academic resilience through coursework for the doctoral degree she is pursuing at Johns Hopkins University.
She has mapped these skills—such as perseverance, reflection, and collaboration—onto BBA’s existing spire skills (problem solving, integrative thinking, citizenship, wellness, and communication) and habits of learning (preparedness, participation, self reflection, perseverance, and learner agency), noting that “students are already demonstrating resilience . . . but they don’t always recognize it, and they don’t always translate it to their academic work.”
Laura’s work is a powerful testament to the caliber of teaching at BBA,” says Associate Head of School Meg Kenny. “By formalizing the way we teach and track resilience, she isn't just adding to the curriculum; she’s empowering our students with a mindset that will serve them long after they leave our campus. We are incredibly proud to support her as she leads this vital work for our community.”
Her fellowship aims to “make this invisible visible” by introducing shared language across classrooms and creating systems for students to track their growth. A key component will be the development of a “RISE Record” (Resilience Indicators for Student Engagement), a dynamic tool where students document evidence of their learning over time.
“Students will gather evidence over time that will go alongside their transcript,” Callen explains. More importantly, the process helps students build confidence: “[They will be able to say,] ‘wait, I actually am pretty resilient . . . I can get through hard things because I’ve proven that I can.’”
The initiative will begin with a ninth-grade pilot and expand across the school, supported by a collaborative working group of faculty and students.
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