Teaching Emotional Intelligence in schools

The ability to express and control one’s emotions is important in everyday life, as well as understanding, interpreting, and responding to the emotions of others. Psychologists refer to this ability as Emotional Intelligence and some experts even suggest that it may be even more important than IQ. Since the 1990s, Peter Salovey, John D. Mayer, and Daniel Goleman have researched emotional intelligence.

Principles of Emotional Intelligence

Perceiving Emotions: The first step in understanding emotions is to perceive them accurately. In many cases, this may involve understanding non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions.

Reasoning with Emotions: The next step involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Emotions help to prioritize what we are aware of and react correctly.

Understanding Emotions: The emotions we perceive convey a wide variety of meanings. If someone is expressing emotions of anger, the observer will be able to interpret the cause of their anger and what it means.

Managing Emotions: The ability to manage emotions effectively is a fundamental part of emotional intelligence. Regulating emotions, responding appropriately, and understanding other people’s emotions are important aspects of emotional management.

IE and schools

Learning at school is a progressive and planned activity with the conviction that all children are different from adults and that they need to be prepared for adult life. Is it possible to teach emotional “skills” in schools? For many, “teaching” emotional intelligence defies all of the basic principles of the current learning paradigm.

Fortunately, emotional intelligence can be taught, as well as mathematics or literature. It can be easily integrated into the academic curriculum by improving classroom teaching and the school environment. Presenting emotions in schools would be a radical change! Daniel Goleman describes that everyone, principals, teachers, parents, and students, once involved in the process, should know the rules for developing important competencies.

What skills?

• Self-knowledge: One of the basic emotional skills. Be able to recognize feelings and give names to each of them. It is also important to be aware of the relationship between thoughts, feelings, actions, and to evaluate them. Was it a thought that triggered that feeling? What feeling is behind each action?

• Managing emotions: It is important to understand what is behind each feeling. Beliefs have a fundamental effect on the ability to act and react. Besides, finding ways to deal with anger, fear, anxiety, and sadness is essential: learning to calm down when you are in an uncomfortable situation, for example. Being able to channel emotions to a positive end is a fundamental skill for everyday life.

• Empathy: Getting the measure of a situation and being able to act appropriately requires understanding the feelings of the other people involved and being able to take your point of view. It is important to be able to listen to them, without getting carried away by personal emotions. There is a need to be able to distinguish between what others do or say and personal reactions and judgments.

• Communication: Developing quality relationships has a very positive effect on everyone involved. What feelings are being communicated to others? Enthusiasm and optimism are contagious as are pessimism and negativism. Being able to express personal concerns without anger is an essential element of emotional intelligence.

• Cooperation: Knowing how and when to take the lead and when to move forward is essential for effective cooperation. Effective leadership is not built on domination but on the art of helping people work together on common goals.

• Conflict resolution: To resolve conflicts there is a need to understand the mechanisms. People in conflict are often caught in an emotional spiral of self-perpetuation in which the declared subject of conflict is rarely the key issue. Much of conflict resolution using the other emotional skills.

Preventing bullying with Emotional Intelligence

Emotions are of great importance at school. A child who feels anxious, jealous, hopeless, or alienated will have difficulty learning, making decisions, and building relationships. Emotions are also at the heart of bullying, a major social problem in many schools in different nations. At least a third of all American children report that they have been victims of bullying, a terrible experience that can manifest itself in many ways, including physical aggression and verbal abuse. The root of each of these symptoms is a lack of emotional understanding and self-awareness.

With Emotional Intelligence as a learning base, the result includes a better school, with happier and more effective educators and students, and a huge decline in bullying. Research shows that children who attend schools based on the experience of teaching emotional intelligence are less anxious and depressed, have a higher level of focus, attention, and learning; they are better problem solvers; exhibit greater social skills and leadership; and better academic performance. The atmosphere in the classroom improves. Teacher-student relationships become stronger and more positive.

To neglect children’s emotional education is to create adults at risk, leaving them at the mercy of emotions they feel but do not know how to recognize.

As Aristotle wrote: Educating the mind without educating the heart is not education. Research shows that bringing emotional skills into the classroom leads to more positive interaction between students. Still, the idea of ​​introducing this innovative technique into the curriculum can be daunting for educators who are unfamiliar with these concepts, especially those who work in traditional settings.