Emotional Intelligence

More than two decades ago Daniel Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ. Since then there have been an assortment of character education and affective learning programs scattered through the education universe. Today's focus on whole child learning, social emotional programing, restorative justice, trauma informed education and mindfulness continue the trend. In the intervening decades we have learned even more about neuroscience and yet, we still struggle with implementing these skills into the classroom even though we know they have positive impact.

I managed to get an audiobook version from 2005. Again I struggled with listening to deep content. In part because I was driving for most of the book and in part because maintaining listening attention and focus without taking notes is extremely challenging. When I listen to a deep text, I am constantly reminded of how students should follow along, annotate and take notes when they listen to texts from which we hope they will learn.

Goleman focuses on five main elements of emotional intelligence:

1. self-awareness
2. self-regulation
3. motivation
4. empathy 
5. social skills.

The part that I found fascinating was the application chapters. He talks about the role of the family in developing emotional sophistication, trauma and how it impacts emotions and self-regulation, and the role of temperament. He discusses how emotional skills improve health by virtue of improved immune systems.

Being bathed in the world of Autism, I see the parallels between the challenges of emotional intelligence and the struggles of those on the spectrum. 

• Self-awareness- people on the spectrum tend to have weak emotional vocabularies and abilities to identify emotions they feel. They tend to use few levels of emotions, which may result in wild swings in mood.
• self-regulation- if you do not know how you feel, you will struggle with managing yourself. 
• motivation- being able to engage in long-term planning and follow through is difficult for many children. People on the spectrum often find time difficult- my son is rigid about everyone following timelines. He needs to organize his life on the clock. Changing his schedule is getting easier, but still presents a challenge.
• empathy- if you cannot recognize your own feelings, doing so in others is nearly impossible. Thomas the Train is remarkably successful with youngsters on the spectrum because the facial expressions are so clear. The program can be used in therapeutic settings to help youngsters.
• social skills- the entire pragmatic, social language is the core of the disorder. Developing these skills is essential to productive futures.

The part that resonated most with me was the chapters on training the skills. In schools we have started to put this in the forefront but our schools of education, where teachers learn their craft, do not require training in developing emotional intelligence in students. He identifies a variety of programs that have been used to help develop skills, emphasized the role of having a long term coherent programs that empirically are effective. He criticizes the drug prevention program reliance on DARE as popular but ineffective and stresses the importance of locating successful programs and implementing them in developmentally appropriate ways.

This should be a baseline reading for all teachers. It provides the rationale for any other social-emotional program that a district choses to implement. It points the way for deeper and more intense programing to help our children become successful. In today's world where people are increasingly isolated, where attention to anything beyond a sound byte is monumentally challenging, where technology is taking the place of interactions, we need to focus on emotional aptitude more than ever.