In 1990, the US experienced the highest rates it had ever seen of juvenile arrests for violent crimes, teen arrests for rape, teen murder rates, suicide rates, and murder victims under the agen of 14. Children at the time were also reported as doing worse in school, socialization, and mood. Wealth made no difference, and neither did ethnicity or race -- the problems were universal.
Internationally, families are plagued by financial worries and other stresses, meaning parents can’t spend as much time with their children to teach them emotional intelligence. The need to make money has also increased mobility -- people move to where jobs are -- so kids have less connection to their extended family, another source of learning.
Since family life doesn’t necessarily offer the same connections and instruction it once did, schools have become the one place communities can depend on to educate their children and correct their behaviors. It’s the one place most children go, and it presents a big opportunity to positively impact upcoming generations.
Emotional literacy is a bigger challenge facing today’s students than any low scores in math or reading, and yet most schools do nothing about this incredibly important subject. Not only that, but emotional distress has significant negative effects on performance -- so schools looking to get better academic performance from their students should think about introducing emotional intelligence education.
Emotional Issues in the Classroom
Kids are building differently fundamental skills at different ages, and at different ages, schools and teachers can help them improve critical life skills:
- Preschoolers are building foundational skills, and teaching basic impulse control, self-soothing, and positive communication could go a long way down the line.
- Kindergarteners are entering their first real social world, and starting to feel the “comparison” emotions that come with it: insecurity, jealousy, pride, confidence, or humiliation.
- Late elementary school is when academic performance begins to solidify how a child thinks of herself -- as successful, or capable, or stupid, or wrong -- and allowing negative self-image to creep in here almost guarantees a diminishment of prospects later in life.
- In middle school or junior high, all students experience a significant decrease in self-confidence and increase in self-consciousness. Self-esteem becomes a major issue.
Children who are angry, depressed, anxious, timid or shy, or socially awkward in particular are at risk of dropping out of school: social rejects will find it more difficult to complete schooling at any level.
- Social rejects essentially have no one to turn to at school, and yet they spend most of their time there. This is incredibly isolating, and reinforces most of their toxic thoughts and bad habits, which in turn negatively affect their academic performance.
Anxiety in the Classroom
High anxiety is almost a guarantee that someone will perform poorly under pressure. Many difficult things children face -- poverty, abuse, social rejection, racism, sexism, ableism -- cause high levels of anxiety, though these factors may not be easily identifiable by teachers.
Even when someone has a higher IQ, if they also have higher levels of anxiety, they’ll be less likely to fail a test of any kind and perform worse in academic environments.
- 126 separate studies with more than 36,000 participants found that the more a person worries, the more likely they are to perform poorly in academics by any measurable standard, be it test grades, GPAs, or achievement tests.
Anxiety generally circles around self-defeating thoughts that turn into absolutes--”I’ll never be able to do this, I’m not good at this kind of thing”--and this kind of thinking also turns into self-fulfilling prophecies, and ultimately undermines someone’s ability to make decisions with confidence.
Not all anxiety is bad -- it’s how we deal with anxiety that determines whether we succeed. Some students crumble under anxiety and perform poorly; some students let their anxiety motivate them to prepare for the challenge, try their hardest, and ultimately succeed.
There’s an ideal peak of useful anxiety in which the amount of nervousness propels the worrier towards excellence. Too little anxiety and someone will feel unmotivated or apathetic about the task at hand; too much anxiety and the person will feel overwhelmed by the pressure and the potential for failure.
- This ideal peak can be referred to as something like hypomania, in which the mind is agitated but in a positive way. Hypomania is thought to be the optimal mindset for some callings, like creative professions, because it energizes the creator and gets them thinking outside the box. But left unchecked the hypomania can devolve into straight mania, and undermine their ability to focus and be coherent.
Good moods and positive feelings enhance our ability to be creative, complex, and flexible, three necessary components for problem-solving.
- If a student is struggling with a problem, try making them laugh. Laughter helps us think broadly and more laterally, associate more freely, and notice relationships we didn’t see before (surprising relationships are the root of all humor).
What School Can Do
It’s never too early to start introducing emotional intelligence into the learning environment.
In experiments, researchers put emotional intelligence programming into place in schools. Kids and classes who went through emotional intelligence training saw the following benefits:
- They were more responsible, assertive, confident, social, outgoing, helpful, understanding, considerate, concerned, and democratic.
- They had better conflict resolution-skills, coping skills, social cognitive skills, self-control, planning, and focus.
- They improved their ability to recognize and label their own emotions and others’, and experienced less sadness, depression, anxiety, and withdrawal.
- They scored better on standardized achievement tests, and improved their learning-to-learn skills.
- Boys were less aggressive, girls were less self-destructive.
- There were fewer suspensions and expulsions, and less delinquency, drugs, and socially disordered behavior.
- There was a more positive classroom atmosphere, and students had more positive attachment to both school and their families.
Adding Emotional Intelligence to Curriculum
Teachers are already burdened by state-sanctioned requirements, curriculum, and testing material, and it might seem overwhelming to have to introduce emotional intelligence components into totally separate courses.
The good news is that emotional intelligence lessons can be easily integrated into existing subjects, and can be taught alongside already present curriculum.
- For example, you might think math has little to do with emotional intelligence. But math requires studying, and good study habits require some emotional intelligence: the ability to motivate yourself to do something you don’t necessarily want to do, the ability to ignore distractions in favor of a bigger goal, and the ability to manage your impulses to focus on learning. A math class that could incorporate these lessons into the math lessons would most likely see an improvement in test scores.
- Or reading a story about friendship in an English class, and using it as a platform for teaching self-awareness, empathy, and communicating feelings.
One major way teachers can begin to incorporate emotional intelligence into daily school life is by adjusting they way the discipline problem students. Again, most teachers are overwhelmed as it is, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to train every individual problem student to be more emotionally intelligent. But any disciplinary moment is an opportunity to begin to teach children impulse control, understanding and explaining their feelings, and conflict management.
- For example, three students push each other around to try to get to the lunchroom first. Instead of yelling, “Stop that!” at them, or putting them all in a timeout, you could try suggesting an impartial way to determine who goes first. Pick a number and have them guess, and whoever is closest goes first. This will teach them problem-solving in a positive manner.
And, if teachers feel up to it, they can incorporate a variety of lessons directly on emotional intelligence in to the day-to-day activities of their classroom.
- One teacher has a mailbox in her classroom where kids can write down complaints or issues, and then the teacher leads a class-wide discussion about the problems (omitting names or details that call people out, obviously). This helps teach kids empathy and cooperative problem-solving.
- Another teacher with younger students teaches them the Stoplight System for handling emotions:
- RED LIGHT: Stop. Calm down. Think before you take any action.
- YELLOW LIGHT: Express the problem and your feelings about it. Set positive goals and brainstorm as many solutions as possible. Think about the possible consequences.
- GREEN LIGHT: Go ahead and put the best plan into action.
- Another teacher’s SOCS system is a version of this for older students and teachers themselves:
- Explain the SITUATION is and how it makes you feel.
- Consider your OPTIONS for solving the issue.
- Think through to the CONSEQUENCES that come with each option.
- Pick a SOLUTION and put it into action.
Teachers become fundamental components in this new framework: they must go beyond their traditional duties and take on more responsibility. Just as parents serve as instructive teachers just based on their own behavior, so teachers also set examples for their students of how to handle emotional situations.
- In general, teachers who are more comfortable talking about feelings help their students get more comfortable with their feelings. You don’t have to get too personal, but it is impossible to keep emotions out of the classroom, and the classroom will need a good leader who has some comfort dealing with and expressing emotions.
- Parents may feel that this oversteps the boundaries of school -- that teachers and schools shouldn’t tackle topics best left to the parents at home. Of course, this requires parents to actually address important emotional topics at home -- and do so successfully.
Though it may be more costly upfront -- in both time and money -- to introduce emotional intelligence into the classroom, it will ultimately boost academic performance, improve graduation rates, and would be worth the initial investment in the positive dividends it pays down the line.