Curriculum Briefing Emotional Intelligence and Improving Behavioiur

“Emotion is always in the loop of reason.”
Antonio Damasio. - The Feeling of What Happens.

Our schools are often at the epicenter of social anxiety. It is fed by government, by local authorities, social services, the police, parents, the media, to name but a few, and in this environment of pressure and measurement and performance targets, staff and children can find it challenging to just survive, let alone thrive. Pressure and anxiety, often accompanied by the bed fellows of fear of failure, anger and frustration, bring about classrooms where stress levels are massive, tensions run high and staff and pupils often find themselves in a state of reactiveness and victimhood. No wonder some children behave in challenging and destructive ways.

If we add to this our seemingly almost fanatic reverence for intellect, and the pursuit of qualifications, we can become blind to something that is of fundamental importance to performance and wellbeing. That something is the power of emotion. Whilst we are creatures of reason, we are first and foremost driven by emotion, secondly by habit, and only then by reason. At every single level, in every single school, how individuals are feeling about themselves, about others and about their performance, plays a huge part, if not the largest part, in determining how they behave and what they achieve. We ignore it at our peril!

DANNYS STORY

Danny had got to a make or break point in his school. He had all but used up his ‘lives’ in terms of excluded days. It looked like his future would see him moved to another school, maybe then to another. Perhaps it would be only a matter of time before he would be tempted by crime and drugs and his chances of becoming a productive and responsible member of society disappeared. He had a temper and a very short fuse, so ‘explosions’ were regular. They were the by-products of anger and fear. Fear of failure and fear of not being in control. His outbursts were always justified by him and blamed on others, his reputation was fixed and expectations low.

I am happy to say that Danny is now thriving in school. A bright boy, he is now doing well academically and feels good about himself and what he has achieved, and is achieving. Danny has become ‘emotionally intelligent’ with the help of a teacher who saw and understood how it was Danny’s ‘emotional illiteracy’ that was holding him back.

What is Emotional Inteligence?

Made popular by Daniel Goleman in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’, the term is used to encapsulate a collection of skills and attributes which research has shown to be the ones that make for ‘star’ performance and success in any walk of life. It is also important to note that a great body of evidence is building from the world of medicine, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive development and education, as well as business, which point to the impact EI has on our thoughts, feelings, general health and well being, and our performance, on a day to day basis

It is now recognized that there are many forms of intelligence that go far beyond the usual narrow definition that sees IQ as being all there is. These intelligences include: Verbal/Linguistic; Mathematical/Logical; Visual/Spatial; Naturalist; Musical; Bodily/Kinesthetic; Intra and Interpersonal. It is these last two that make up what has become known as ‘emotional intelligence’, and many regard them as the most important intelligences to develop because of their impact on performance and achievement. For example, no matter how skilled you might be, say as a sportsperson [usually high in visual/spatial and bodily/kinesthetic intelligence] lack of self belief, poor motivation and persistence can seriously sabotage winning.

Whilst some of us seem to be born with a good helping of EI, the good news is that it can be developed by anybody, at any time of their life, whatever their background or past experience. Emotional Intelligence is broken down by Goleman into these qualities and attributes –

• The ability to understand oneself, to be self aware moment by moment of how you are feeling and what you are thinking and why.
• The ability to manage feelings, to sooth them, transform them, and harness them positively.
• To take responsibility for your thoughts feelings and actions .
• To have a positive and optimistic outlook.
• To be motivated and persistent
• To be able to recognize and understand the feelings of others. In other words, to be able to empathies with them, and therefore feel compassion.
• To get on well with others and have healthy relationships

Goleman maintains that over 80% of our success at work is based on our EQ not our IQ, and that if schools focused more time and attention on developing the EQ competencies, behaviour and results would improve and society would become a better place for us all. Interestingly, the very same qualities are cited by most employers when asked what they are looking for when they employ a young person, so for high EQ read high employability prospects. It all sounds compelling, but what does it mean in practice? What does an ‘emotionally intelligent’ child, or teacher, or classroom, actually look like and how do you get there?

How the Brain Works - Understand the Loop

We spend our time in a loop that in turn informs and directs our behaviour. We take in information through our senses and that information is then sent to the thalamus in the brain, which in turn sends the information for processing to the limbic system (also known as the mammalian brain) where we store responses to, amongst other things, perceived threats or challenges, and the cortex or smart brain (the seat of reason, rationale and problem solving). Over time, as we learn how to respond to people and situations, a ‘neural pathway’ is formed in the brain and thus habits develop. With repetition these habits become deeply ingrained and are seldom challenged.

Generally the cortex and the limbic system work as a team. In particular the cortex keeps the more emotional limbic brain in check. For example, you might be very angry or hurt by something your Head Teacher has said to you, but your smart brain would stop you from lashing out, or stomping out, or bursting into tears, because it would understand the career impact that might have on your future. It would know it is not the ‘smart’ way to behave. However if your state of mind is vulnerable, if you are feeling under great stress, if pressure has brought you to the edge, sometimes a very different response can occur. Herein lies the greatest challenge to behaviour. Information reaches the limbic system which houses the amygdala, before it reaches the cortex. If your amygdala perceives you are under some sort of threat or challenge, [physical or psychological] it has the ability to take control of what happens next. It can instantly shut down the thinking brain, because it has decided you need to be thrown straight into survival mode – namely to fight, or flee or freeze or flock, in order to protect yourself. Once the ‘hijack’ has occurred, it takes a while for the whole brain to be fully functioning again, for the high emotion to subside, and for the individual to feel calm again. Even that might not happen. If you keep on and on remembering and re-running the episode that had caused you some form of distress, then you can settle into a simmering mood of resentment, anger or pain and so your stress hormones would carry on being produced.

The Power of Thoughts

As long as we are alive we are going to be thinking. A negative or positive thought produces a feeling [our emotional response] and that in turn leads to a physiological reaction. i.e. our body reacts, and we respond by taking action in some way. In time, by repetition, that reaction becomes our habitual response which then informs our behaviour.

In the case of Danny, he would perceive for example, that somebody was looking at him in a certain way, which he would interpret as critical and threatening. That would provoke a feeling of inferiority, which would make him feel hurt and angry and he would get a chemical rush of adrenalin and cortisol into his system, from the control seat of the amygdala. His rational thinking would stop functioning so he could not communicate coherently. Instead he would either lash out verbal abuse, or with his fists, or flee from the room. He was able to bring the lesson to a halt thereby ‘stealing’ the learning from others and upping the stress levels of the LSA teacher and other children.

DANNY’S STORY continued

Danny was not skilled emotionally and this showed in his behaviour. He was ignorant of what triggered the emotional responses when he perceived a threat or challenge, so his levels of self-awareness were low. Even when somebody was paying him a compliment or being nice to him he reacted badly and was immediately suspicious of the intention behind the words. He was, instead, constantly having his buttons pushed and experiencing amygdala ‘hijacks’

He never took responsibility for what had happened but instead blamed others He was primarily driven by fear and a negative self image that disguised itself in anger and bullying behaviour. He thought he was ‘rubbish’ and so was unable to ‘hear’ any positive comments about himself.

Because he expected failure, his ability to stick with a task was minimal so his persistence and motivation to achieve at his work were low. He often disguised this by using the term ‘It’s boring’.

He was not prepared to appreciate anybody else’s point of view, or take their feelings into account. He appeared just not to care. He did not know what to do with himself when he ‘lost it’

He carried a lot of negative emotional baggage from his past both at home and at school. Therefore he anticipated that things would go wrong. Despite the fact, that like all children, he possessed billions of brain cells he ‘knew’ he couldn’t do maths or English, so that belief became deeply embedded and therefore his ‘reality’. “I can’t do it” became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How to Identify Low Emotional Intelligence

You can spot low EI in people of all ages, status and walks of life. Here are some indicators.

• Low self worth. As the writer Gloria Steinham once perceptively stated, “Its not that self esteem is everything, it’s just that there is nothing without it.” People who do not have a good regard for themselves can allow their values to be compromised, can become victims, and their ability to achieve can be eroded.
• A focus on problems and what is wrong, rather than an ability to celebrate the positive. Such people will always see the glass half empty rather than half full. They act as a ‘drag wheel’ rather than a ‘cheerleader’ in any situation.
• Emotional ‘drama queens’. You always know how they are feeling, because they make it obvious by demonstrating it to all. They are OK on a good day but ….
• Little staying power, never there when the going gets tough.
• Will speak no matter what, and easily trample on the feelings of others. Can be oblivious to the effect they have. In other words ‘emotionally deaf’.
• Bullying and controlling.
• Play ‘poor me’ and into victimhood.
• Over caring and over sympathetic, relying on ‘fixing’ others in order to feel good.
• Manipulative.
• Overly passive.
• Overly optimistic, and out of touch, never learning from the ‘hard knock’ lessons of life.
• Repeat mistakes, running away from a situation into yet another.
• Trying to get others on their side to make them feel safer and better.
• Inappropriate use of humour, usually sarcasm and undermining.
• Into blame, seldom owning responsibility for anything as it’s always somebody else’s fault.
• Often putting self down.
• Never satisfied with own performance, overly self critical.
• Part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
• Dysfunctional relationships.
• Unable to accept praise and compliments and unable to praise or compliment others.
• Behaving badly in order to be the focus of attention because it fuels a sense of power.
• Gossip.
• Keep giving and never nurture themselves.
• Constantly reacting to others and emotionally at their beck and call.
• Too nice.
• Don’t believe they can change.
• Fearful of change.
• Dogmatic and narrow minded.
• Cynical.
• Think they know all there is to know about a subject. “I’ve been teaching for 25 years you can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”
• Often in overwhelm, unable to read other peoples signals, emotionally chaotic.
• Poor memory recall.

What Do Children Need in Order to Thrive?

I am struck by the obviousness when I look at the list of what children need to thrive, and how it matches what we as adults need..

Children need –

• To feel a sense of personal autonomy and self motivation.
• To connect with others and feel a sense of belonging and appreciation.
• To be free of anxiety about not being good enough.
• To keep alive their innate sense of curiosity and their ability to be engrossed in the moment.
• To feel safe.
• To have fun.
• To be themselves – that is special and unique.
• To feel a sense of achievement.
• To feel heard.
• To help.
• To do well.
• To let their imagination and creativity flow.
• To realize their unique potential.
• To be part of the solution not part of the problem.
• Not to be given a label from which they cannot escape.
• Compassion and love.
• A challenge.
• To understand what the boundaries are and how to live within them.
• Routine.
• To communicate.
• Not to be afraid to give something a go, to be free from a worry about failure.
• To learn in a multiple intelligence, multi sensory way

DAVID - DANNY’S TEACHER

David was Danny’s tutor. Like many teachers he often found his stress levels high, although he really wanted to be doing the job he was doing. He lived daily with an underlying anxiety that pervaded the whole school – fear of failure. It sometimes kept him isolated and it often kept him in the ‘band of bland’, that region where you ‘play safe’ and don’t take risks, and where you feel more in control. Like the children, he too was caught in a self perpetuation loop, often waiting for the problems of the previous day to repeat themselves, waiting for things to go wrong, and being in an ever ready state to react to whatever was going to flare up.

David decided to increase his own levels of emotional intelligence, persuaded by the importance of self nurturing and the need to ‘be the change he wanted to see’. He reflected on teachers and others adults that had inspired him, and realized the power of modeling. He spent time investing in the ‘being he took to his daily doing’. As his own EI faculties grew, so his approach to Danny and the whole class changed, and within a term the transformation was tangible. With regards to Danny David changed his approach in the following ways –

• He felt a true sense of empathy with him.
• He always tried to approach him in an assertive way.
• He created time and a safe space to let Danny reveal his issues.
• He showed he understood by being and active and intuitive listener and by the language he used with him “I would feel that way if that had happened to me”.
• He showed respect but tough love.
• He stopped becoming just another adult who shouted and reacted to him.
• He talked him down rather than forced him down and never backed him into corners.
• He helped him to reflect using coaching techniques.
• He invested time because he rightly realized it would buy him valuable teaching time with the whole class.
• He focused on relationship rather than performance.
• He taught him techniques for understanding and mastering his emotions and gave him the freedom to use them.
• He praised regularly.
• He expected the best from him.
• He gave him responsibilities.

The Emotionaly Intelligent Classroom

Helping a challenging student proved to be hugely beneficial for Danny, David and the whole class, but in itself was not enough. David wanted to create a culture or ethos that would enable the EI attributes to be lived and breathed by the class. There were about seven other potential ‘Danny’s’ in the class who were all powerful in infecting the class in a negative way. There were times when the atmosphere in the room seemed like it could easily slip into chaos, so the temptation for David was to clamp down and try to keep the lid on what was bubbling under the surface. It was especially challenging when pupils arrived in the room in a negative state emotionally, because of what had happened in the lesson before, or on the way to school, or at home or during breaks. So David set about creating the emotionally intelligent classroom.

Here are some of the well proven tools and techniques he used.

• He focused on creating a conducive atmosphere in his room. After attending a multi sensory awareness programme, he changed the colours, the classroom layout, put up inspirational EI posters as reminders, changed the lighting, got as much fresh air in as possible, and kept the space neat and tidy with the help of the pupils.
• He encouraged pupils to explore their feelings via feelings diaries. He helped them explore cause and effect, showed them the cathartic benefit of dumping negative feelings, and helped them build a wider emotional vocabulary.
• Issues were discussed via regular sharing ‘circle time’.
• He used EI values ‘pockets’ to get the class to focus on the positives that were happening during their day, rather than getting hooked into what was going wrong and who was behaving badly. There was a regular celebration of positive behaviour based on the EI competencies.
• He used music to set a mood – to uplift and inspire or relax and calm. He began this simply with familiar tunes such as John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and got the class to explore the meaning of the lyrics
• He taught the class how to meditate but called it stilling.
• He showed them how to control their physiology using the latest biofeedback computer software. This proved to be a particularly powerful and effective tool that stopped pupils like Danny ‘loosing it’.
• He showed them how to visualize and harness the power of their imaginations.
• He got them to listen to what was going on with their thoughts, how to dump the negatives, how to reframe beliefs and build ‘positive muscle’.
• He got them to build their self esteem, and as it grew and they began to feel better about themselves, they began to pay each other regular compliments and bond more as a team.
• He taught them how to be active listeners and how to resist reacting, when they perceived somebody was ‘getting at them’ or to them.

DAVIDS STORY CONTINUED

In order to bring about the changes listed above, David had to make sure certain things happened.

He carried on working on his own EI and gave himself time for self-nurturing.
He carried things forward slowly, a step, sometimes a small one, at a time, accepting the regular set backs. In other words not matter how often saboteurs in the classroom and beyond tried to stop something happening he just kept going.
He made sure he had a support system for himself when times got tough.
There were a very clear set of boundaries, rules and expectations that informed the ethos of the class. The pupils knew what they were and David methodically applied them.
He made sure that such things as meditation/stilling were held regularly [daily in fact,] so that they became embedded and routine.
He ensured that all EI activities were valued.
He focused on building a culture of mutual respect so pupils felt safe to express how they were really feeling.
If ever a lesson was not going well he gave himself permission to stop the learning and deal with the emotional issue that was going on so the lesson could be effectively resumed.

To Conclude

In time, and it did take time, David’s focus on EI paid off. The class became a calm caring one. Attendance and behaviour improved and so did the quality of work. Children were happier and so were staff and parents.

David and Danny’s story is not unique. They were in a school that was part of the three year LEA funded ‘Discovery Project’ that focused on raising levels of EI in the six schools on the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth.

The successful blueprint the project provided was then used by a further nine schools in the heart of the city, with the help of the Children’s Fund, and has consequently been spreading across the country, where over a hundred schools are using its methodology and tools.

If you would like to know more about ‘Discovery’ and Emotional Intelligence, please contact Val Tudor on 02392 386663 or Cheryl@cherylbuggy.co.uk

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