Throughout my journey to becoming a teacher I've found that I am most inspired by lessons that teach emotional education. A teacher that can motivate a class to be excited for math, writing, or reading is amazing. One that can motivate even a single child to survive in a world of obstacles and emotions is a treasure. I think the idea of emotional education can be intimidating for most teachers. They're afraid it isn't their place, or in their ability to reach into the depths of what makes up the little humans that walk into their classrooms everyday. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is our job to "mold" children any more than most parents would want us to. But I do believe in the power of enabling a child to emotionally handle whatever they may come up against, at the very least, in our own classrooms. Think of it in terms of the war on bullying that has made such a strong appearance in our schools today. This recent push towards bullying awareness is great, but a few lessons a year won't really cut it on a daily basis of social interaction, pressures, and stressors. So often teachers find themselves asking how they will deal with a situation that requires discipline, but what I find so often lacking is the mindset that these situations are opportunities for emotional lessons. In a classroom with 25-30 children this seems like a luxury, but if the lessons are worked in from the start, then eventually they will require less and less attention. Sitting and talking with a child for 5 minutes one day may save you hundreds of minutes of “discipline” in the future. Even better, working these lessons into everyday curriculum allows the children to learn to interact with each other with compassion, in turn making the classroom all the more family environment that is strived for. My goal for this blog is to not only share some idea's for everyday lessons in emotional intelligence, but for it to become a forum where teachers who have used lessons themselves may share them here for others to reference. If you have a lesson that you have used with positive results please email the details to me so we may share it with others who are looking for a lesson to use in their own class! Photo's, samples, video, and audio files are all accepted. Let's start the emotication revolution!!
Teach on!
