Integrated Education and Emotion

1. Integrated Education and Emotion By Keyvan Geula LMFT Director of Center for Global Integrated Education, Inc. (CGIE) www.cgie.org/blog

2. Continued Education • Which childhood teacher you remember? • Why do you remember this teacher?

3. Effects of Emotions on Achievement • “The basic unit of human memory is information in context connected to feelings. • This means that how someone learns is as important as what someone learns” (Maurice Elias, 1999) • Emotions give a more activated and chemically stimulated brain, which helps us recall things better (Cahill et al, 1994)

4. That our thoughts, our views, our feelings may become as one reality manifesting the spirit of union throughout the worlds.” Baha’i prayers

5. 5 main domains of emotional Intelligence • 1. Knowing one’s emotions • Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence • 2. Managing one’s emotions • Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self awareness. • 3. Motivating oneself Marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort.

6. 5 main domains of emotional Intelligence 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Empathy kindles altruism. 5. Handling relationships. • The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others.

7. Effects of Emotions on Learning & Living • “Emotions are more important and powerful to the brain than higher-order thinking skills” (Eric Jensen, Brain Based Learning) • People who have poor abilities at reading body language are less academically successful (Katz and Hoover, 1997) • Children with highly developed social skills perform better academically than peers who lack these skills (Grossman et al, 1997)

8. Effects of Emotion on Learning • Students who are anxious or depressed earn lower grades/lower achievement scores, and are more likely to repeat a grade (Kovics and Baatraens, 1994) • Children’s written/spoken narratives are more accurate, detailed, and coherent when preceded by emotional content (Liwag and Stein, 1995, cited in Frey 1999)

9. Emotions are contagious • We send emotional signals at every encounter and influence others. • When people view (or imagine) a smiling or angry face, their own faces show evidence of that same mood through slight changes in the facial muscles. EI p. 115 • Blocking emotional leakage has a price. • The direction of mood transfer is from the one who is more forceful in expressing feelings to the one who is more passive. EI p. 116 • The emotional synchrony between teachers and students indicate how much rapport they feel. EI p. 116

10. What’s Love Got to Do With Education? • Do your students like you? • Studies in classroom show that the closer the movement coordination between teacher and student, the more they felt friendly, happy, enthused, interested, and easy going while interacting. • A high level of synchrony in an interaction means the people involved like each other. EI p. 116

11. The most elementary lessons of social interaction for children • To speak directly to others when spoken to, • To initiate social contact, not always wait for others to carry on a conversation, • Not simply fall back on yes or no or other one word replies • To express gratitude towards others, • To let another person walk before one in passing through a door, • To wait until one is served something, • To thank others, to say “please” • To share …. EI p. 121

12. Empathy Releases Learning Ability and Achievement Capacity • Low levels of empathy are associated with poor school achievement (Nowicki and Duke, 1992, cited in Frey 1999) • Children who respond to setbacks with hope and resiliency vs. anger and hopelessness achieve higher academic and social success (Dweck, 1996) • Students who believe their teachers support and care about them • Are more engaged with their work (Skinner and Belmont, 1993) • Value their work more, and have higher academic goals (Goodnow, 1993, cited in Frey 1999)

13. Belief in a Universal Power and Eternal Life Affects Human Emotional Experience & Response “For the last thirty or forty years we’ve seen the ascendance of individualism and a waning of larger belief in religion, and in supports from the community and extended family. That means a loss of resources that can buffer you against setbacks and failures. To the extend you see a failure as something that is lasting and which you magnify to taint everything in your life, you are prone to let a momentary defeat become a lasting source of hopelessness. But if you have a larger perspective, like a belief in God and in afterlife, and you lose your job , it’s just a temporary defeat.” Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist EI p. 241

14. Tools for Happiness • Some questions to reflect upon: • What helps you transcend difficulties? • What reduces your stress? • What gives you hope in times of trial? • What connects you with an unconditional, unchangeable source of power and love? • How big and undivided is your world? • What is the meaning of “good” to you?