Emotional Intelligence

I recently found out that Yale has this thing called The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.  From what I can see in the website, it's a center that helps teach people like school counsellors on how to implement emotional intelligence education into their curriculum.  Their strategy is built around this framework called RULER, which stands for Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions.

I thought it was cool that there's an initiative like this to teach counsellors all over the US (the list is here, and it seems pretty geographically dispersed, pretty cool) on a tested way of teaching kids how to work with their emotions.

I feel like this is the future: where kids get to learn how to work with their feelings, in a collaborative, safe place.  If they had this when I was a kid, I feel like it would have been one of the most important classes I could have taken.  I'm really glad there are people out there taking their time to make this a thing.

At the same time, I feel kind of nervous about if this is going to work.  At how young an age can a child appreciate their ability to be aware of what's going on inside of them?  As a person who hasn't really talked to children in a while, I guess it makes me scared that they'll brush these ideas off.  An image of some of my classmates in 5th grade come to mind.

But I guess you never know until you find out, right?  I'm glad these counsellors are doing this work.  Because it must be hard if a student is not cooperating.  It must hurt if a student brushes off your teachings like they don't matter.

Anyways, I guess this post kind of turned into exposing my own fear of kids.  But I'm curious about the center's work, so I'll be sure to read up on their updates often.

I was reading one of the stories in the "Real Stories" section.  It's interesting to note that they didn't stop the education within just the classroom: they got the students' families to buy into the RULER approach as well.  I think that was something I was unconsciously worried about, so it's nice to know that the method pushes for that as well. 

The last paragraph of the page really stood out to me:

“I’m not pollyannaish about this work and I’m not saying everything is perfect now,” explains Visage. “But our students are more emotionally fluent and capable of self-regulation, there’s more time in the classroom available for instruction, and parents are talking about improved family climates at home and a reduction in yelling, crying and melt downs, for both kids AND adults.” Visage has been at Waterside for 11 years, and her steadfast commitment to RULER is grounded in the changes she’s seen since bringing in the Anchor Tools. “The choice to bring RULER to Waterside was both pragmatic and necessary– it’s not just a “nice” thing we decided to do on the side,” Visage says emphatically. “It’s highly effective in the service of our mission.”

I remember that for many of my teachers, the way to get kids to buy in greatly varied.  There was anger, there was guilt, there was honesty, there was humor.  So when I read that Waterside (the school mentioned in the article) has "more time in the classroom available for instruction", it makes me happy to see that RULER seems to also make the classroom more harmonious as a result. 

Also the fact that for this school, "The choice to bring RULER to Waterside was both pragmatic and necessary... not just a 'nice' thing we decided to do on the side...", is also interesting and empowering.  I'm glad that Ms. Visage sees emotional intelligence as an imperative part of a student's learning, and that the children seem to be buying in. 

It's amazing work and I hope they can keep it up.