Emotional EfficiencyMission:
To de-stigmatize emotional intelligence and make it part of public academia. I have chosen to use this space as a place to collect resources I have found to support emotional learning and intelligence.
"Warm, fed, rested, safe, willing":
When people have all of their needs met for food, safety, love, and belonging, they are more willing to do work. What is often missing or over looked is the need for love and belonging, which you can see in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It could be argued that love and belongingness are just as important as physiological and safety needs. The Four AgreementsThe Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, is an excellent place to start when learning how to relate with others. I read it when I was 18, but I could see this book being taught from elementary through high school.
Resources on Forgiveness
Like these cool videos? Check out School of Life on YouTube, created by Alain de Botton for more short videos on life's big questions about our emotional and psychological lives. The idea is very similar, they tackle these topics in a very concise and easy to understand way, but my mission would be to actually bring these lessons into all classroom settings.
|
My Story
When I look back at my entire public-school career, I don’t remember nearly as much about what I was being taught as I remember the relationships I made throughout. A vast majority of my time was spent trying to navigate through friendships, dating, bullies, and finding my place. What I craved was summer vacation, and not necessarily because there was no school. Every summer I would attend my two favorite summer camps. Willowbrook is an arts day camp that pops up for 6 glorious weeks. You can do whatever art you wish to partake in. Theater, basketry, weaving, theater, puppetry, pottery, native American arts, nature, etc. The autonomy provided to follow your own interest and the hands-on activities were a welcomed change from the normal structure of school where you’re herded into classrooms and made to sit at a desk. For one or two weeklong sessions I would go to Camp Westwind. My mother would volunteer as camp nurse so that I could attend for free. My two favorite camp activities were the challenge/ropes course, and value sessions. In the challenge course we would have group objectives or challenges given to us, like getting your entire cabin to the other side of a large spider web made of bungee cords with the exception of not being able to touch the cords, and once someone had gone through a hole, that one was no longer usable. Or crossing your team over a floor of lava with just a few carpet squares. I always found these small exercises to be incredibly fascinating. A few people would always be very vocal and competitive, some would try to get a word in but weren’t heard by the most vocal, and some would just remain quiet, going along with the plan. I would usually sit back and observe everyone’s form of communication in these situations. When the activity was over, we would sit down in a circle and discuss what we had just experienced. When I later became a counselor and was trained in leading these discussions, I learned that the basic structure was to ask: What? So what? Now what? It was through these conversations that the real magic happened. We would start by asking the group, what worked? What didn’t work? There would invariably have been some dispute about the people who didn’t let other people speak or didn’t listen to the quieter kids. We would then discuss the so what? Why were these observations important? Why are our interactions and ways that we worked as a team so important? Lastly, we would ask the kids, where do we go from here, or, now what? How could we take what we’ve learned from one another and improv upon our methods in completing the next challenge or trying to complete the same challenge over again? At the end of all of these activities I always felt closer with my cabin mates, like we had learned how to work together as a team through building trust with one another. Value sessions were the other incredible activity that all Westwind campers know and love. With rules like, what happens in the circle stays in the circle, always having the right to pass, no piggy backing (saying: “what she said”), no interrupting, etc. A safe space was created for people to share things about themselves that most people are never asked. Whoever is running the value session will have prepared various questions, often on a specific topic, and each person would have the chance as we move around the circle to answer each question. The questions would sometimes be silly and light-hearted, like, what would you want your last meal to be? Or they could be more serious: What was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen or experienced. There were forms of this where counselors would create a list of yes or no questions or statements, and if the answer was yes you could step over the line. “I have both parents at home.” “I have been bullied for the color of my skin.” “I have lost someone I love.” “I have someone at home who I can go to with any of my problems.” People could raise their hands if they wanted to explain why they moved, or they could let their actions speak for themselves. Looking back, it is a wonder why these activities were never implemented in school settings. At camp it was commonplace, but what about the kids who didn't have the privilege of having these types of experiences? What I craved were these deeper connections with my peers who I spent nine months out of the year with, in safe settings implemented by adults. Spaces where we could look at our peers and learn how to be vulnerable; to see one another on a deeper level. Learn to see what is beyond the façade that we put on when we step into school. School was not fun for me growing up. Judgements, cliques, bullies, fashion, gender, sexual orientation, and dating were stressors constantly pulling for my attention, so much so that I had incredible difficulty shifting my energy toward learning. I did manage, of course, but I think my learning would have greatly benefitted and been accelerated had we had these structures in place in schools. |
|
On Grief and Praise: Shaman, Martin Prechtel, explains that to grieve is to praise the loss of someone or something and why it just as important to allow ourselves to grieve fully as it is to praise, because they are one and the same.
|
Marc Brackett is a research psychologist and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and professor in the child study center at Yale University. In a podcast hosted by Brene Brown, Marc talks about his efforts towards bringing emotional intelligence into our educational systems. His new book, Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotion to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society to Thrive, Brackett explains why it would be advantageous of us to teach children to be more emotionally aware, and how to go about doing it.
|
Brackett introduced the RULER method as a comprehensive way for people to go through a process of relating with the emotions of oneself and others, and using that knowledge to take action accordingly.
|