An Anti-Bullying, Finding our Humanity & Decency Movement
Teaching Empathy, Caring, and Awareness.
Emotional Intelligence is the foundation upon which all other learning should be built.
And empathy is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence.
Many character traits are developed as we develop our emotional intelligence, But empathy reigns supreme. Empathy requires seeing beyond ourselves. Empathy connects us to each other. Empathy protects us against the corruption of our emotional intelligence. In other words, even our greatest qualities can be misapplied and used for selfish and self-serving purposes. Empathy and compassion for others protect us and others against our worst natures.
It is the responsibility of schools to provide enriching environments for young people to assimilate into and contribute to society.
It is imperative that teachers teach our children to be aware of, and care for, others from a young age. Teaching children to be emphatic in nature also has many direct benefits to your student's futures. Studies have consistently shown that emotional intelligence is more important to a child's future success than I.Q. This is a skill set that not only improves the lives of those who possess the skills, but improves the lives of everyone else around them. In other words, the classroom and the school will all see marked improvements when we take a few moments to teach EI on a daily basis.
According to the Center for Creative Leadership “75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust.”
On the other hand "...for jobs of all kinds, emotional competencies were twice as prevalent among distinguishing competencies as were technical skills and purely cognitive abilities combined. In general the higher a position in an organization, the more EI mattered: for individuals in leadership positions, 85 percent of their competencies were in the EI domain.” — Daniel Goleman
We must effectively teach and give our children the emotional building blocks for their own individual as well as societal success.
Trish Shaffer - Social and Emotional Learning
Over the last two decades, multiple studies have been done to gauge the results of EI programs in school. The results show that these programs are effective remedies for a myriad of school ills and improve student performance to boot. The following links provide a small look at a small sampling of the abundant research-
SixSeconds: The Case for Teaching EI in School
Yale Center for Emotional Learning
A few of the benefits when teaching EI is included in the school curriculum:
From Science Daily (summary of key findings)
* Students who participated in programs graduated from college at a rate 11 per cent higher than peers who did not.
* Their high school graduation rate was six per cent higher.
* Drug use and behaviour problems were six per cent lower for program participants.
* Arrest rates 19 per cent lower.
* Diagnoses of mental health disorders 13.5 per cent lower.
From SixSeconds
* American Psychologist, one of the most prestigious sources of peer reviewed psychological research, has released several articles on emotional intelligence. In particular, these reports have demonstrated time-tested support for school-based emotional intelligence prevention and intervention programs leading researchers to conclude:
“There is a solid and growing empirical base concluding that well-designed, well-implemented school-based prevention and youth development programming can positively influence a diverse array of social, health, and academic outcomes.”
*in a 2004 study of 667 high school students, James Parker and team gave students an emotional intelligence assessment and compared those scores to their year- end grades. As shown in the graph to the right, EQ and academic performance are strongly related. Participants in the study were
asked to complete an EQ inventory between the first and second semesters
of the academic year. At the end of the year, each EQ response was matched
with the student’s final grade point average. Students were then divided into
three groups based on their grade point percentiles: highest achievement
(80th percentile and above); lowest achievement (20th percentile and below);
middle (between the 80th and 20th grade point percentiles).
The following results were observed:
Students in the highest achievement group also demonstrated greater
interpersonal competency, adaptability, and stress management than students
in the other groups. Students in the middle percentile group scored significantly
higher than the 20th percentile group for interpersonal competency, adaptability,
and stress management.
* The Assessment of School Climate examines four aspects of the school climate:
Empathy (feeling cared for), Accountability (sense of follow-through),
Respect (considerate behavior), and Trust (belief in the people and institution).
These factors are highly predictive of three critical outcomes: Connectedness,
Learning, and Safety. These outcomes are combined into a “School Performance”
variable. Regression analysis finds that 62.36% of the variation in
School Performance is predicted by the climate.
* The pro-social benefits of emotional intelligence begin at a very young age. In a study of four-year-olds, 51 preschoolers were observed, tracking how they behaved and how they were accepted by peers. Then they were tested to see how much knowledge they had about emotions. Those with higher emotion knowledge were less involved in aggressive interactions and more accepted by their peers.This trend continues in elementary school. In a
study of 160 students (mean age 10.8), those with higher EQ scores were recognized by teachers and peers both as cooperative and as leaders, and for being neither disruptive nor aggressive. By middle school, the challenges become more severe, with middle schoolers experimenting with many risky
behaviors including using alcohol or tobacco. Dennis Trinidad and Anderson Johnson assessed 205 middle school students in southern California, measuring both emotional intelligence and use of alcohol and tobacco. The teens with higher emotional intelligence were less likely to use alcohol and
tobacco.
From Yale Center for Emotional learning
* A meta-analysis of 213 studies evaluating SEL programming efforts demonstrates its benefits to youth from elementary through high school and across urban, suburban and rural schools in the U.S. (Durlak et al., 2011). Almost half (47%) of the reviewed interventions were tested by randomizing students or classrooms to either receiving the SEL program or to functioning as a control group. Primary outcomes were increases in students’ social and emotional skills, improvements in students’ prosocial attitudes and behavior, better mental health, and improved academic performance, including an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement assessed through report card grades and test scores.
* Students are more likely to thrive in classrooms that foster meaningful, caring, safe, and empowering interactions (e.g., Battistich, Solomon, Watson, & Schaps, 1997; McNeely, Nonnemaker, & Blum, 2002; Osterman, 2000).
From Edutopia
* Parents need not fear that emotional intelligence translates to a set of values that may be affiliated with religion. "We're not really teaching values. We're actually teaching skills," says Linda Lantieri, cofounder of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, one of the longest-running conflict resolution and social and emotional learning programs. "They're almost like tools in a toolbox. I remember one parent saying to me, 'You know, in my place of worship, I teach my kid to be honest. But you give the child the skills to be that way.'" The character education movement, which promotes universal values like respect, honesty, justice, and compassion, is also closely aligned to social and emotional learning.
* "We're talking about a whole new vision of education that says that educating the heart is as important as educating the mind," says Lantieri. Rutgers' Elias puts it another way. He says that parents don't just want SAT-smart kids. They want kids who are also responsible, non-violent, and caring: "We want the whole package,"
Edutopia - CASEL Conference on Social and Emotional Learning
Ripple Effect
Teaching Emotional Intelligence has a ripple effect in a child's life. The benefits go beyond increased self control, feeling recognition, empathy, etc. The ripple effect extends into other subject areas. Test scores increase, attendance increases and disciplinary problems decrease. But the effect is not just internal within the child. The ripple effect extends externally to affect positive change in other students. Social creatures that we are, children (and adults) grow or stagnate, or wither in different environments. Schools are not sterile environments of emotional vacuums where only academics and logic should be recognized. Far from it. The human psyche is not built this way. Children are not built this way. So our schools can not be built this way.
Paul Parkin - Reimaging Empathy: The Transformative Nature of Empathy