Cultivating Inner Resilience in Educators and Students: The Inner Resilience Program

The Inner Resilience Program (IRP) was co-founded by Linda Lantieri in the spring of 2002 in response to the effects of September 11, 2001 on New York City schools. The program aims to cultivate the inner lives of teachers, students, and parents in order to equip them with the tools they need to build their inner strength and resilience. IRP also supports teachers and other caregivers to model this way of being for the children in their care. This chapter describes two studies that were conducted on the impact of IRP: a rigorous randomized control trial with NYC public school teachers and a qualitative study of school leaders’ perceived impacts of the program on themselves and on their schools overall. Results from the quantitative study indicate that IRP is effective in reducing teachers’ stress levels, increasing their mindfulness, and improving their relationships with their colleagues, while the qualitative study provides important preliminary evidence that the impact of IRP can be even more powerful when implementation is school-wide.