Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to integrate emotional intelligence into the classroom

Social-emotional learning. Character education. Bullying prevention. These programs all fall under the larger umbrella of emotional intelligence (EQ)—the ability to manage one’s feelings and interact positively with other people. While many schools may touch on it during the school year, Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D., and Steven E. Tobias, Psy.D., authors of Boost Emotional Intelligence in Students, advocate for more formal training in EQ. During their recent edWebinar “How to Boost Emotional Intelligence in Students,” they explained how data shows a high EQ is “more highly correlated with career success than academic skills.” More important, in order to help kids retain their EQ skills, they said schools need to adopt a systematic approach to improving emotional awareness.

The 3 primary areas of EQ

  1. Self-awareness and self-management: These areas focus on helping children understand their own EQ strengths and challenges. Students learn how to not only recognize and talk about their feelings but also work on maintaining and achieving self-control. The purpose of this skill set is to teach students how to be their best selves.
  2. Social awareness and relationship skills: These skills are about learning to read the social and emotional cues of others. Here, the goal is to not only be able to anticipate and defuse their own trigger situations, but for kids to learn how to empathize with others. Empathy also discusses understanding cultural distinctions. With this skill, kids learn how to “code switch” and operate in different ways with different people.
  3. Problem-solving skills: Here, students build on their previous lessons to develop problem-solving strategies they can adapt to a variety of situations. The presenters noted that employers are looking for individuals that can handle stress, value responsibility, resolve conflicts, and find creative solutions to problems. These are all hallmarks of EQ.
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Opinion: The need for character education

In today’s world of public education, a child’s academic success and future prospects for happiness are determined by two narrow measures: their math and reading scores, says New York education advocate Reginald Richardson for Bloomfield Patch. Schools have been placed on state oversight lists and even shuttered for not showing improvement in these two areas. As a result of this focus, our public schools have narrowed curriculum and directed their limited resources to support the singular goal of achieving higher scores… 

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Rutgers to launch a new program promoting politeness

Inspired in part by the propensity for today’s students to lose themselves in technology or leave nasty anonymous comments on web sites, Rutgers University this week is launching Project Civility, a two-year initiative intended to explore politeness and foster respect among members of the state university’s community, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. “For me, living together more civilly means living together more peacefully, more kindly, and more justly,” said Kathleen Hull, a Rutgers faculty member, who is helping to coordinate the effort. “This includes good manners, yes, but so much more.” It is a prudent time to consider what is appropriate behavior, and not just at Rutgers, according to Hull, who began her scholarly research of the subject following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “There’s been a polarization of the country and a moving away from the center in politics that has contributed to difficulty in having civil dialog,” said Hull, who teaches a popular course on the topic. In May, during a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, President Obama remarked that one way to keep democracy healthy “is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate.” Pier M. Forni, a Johns Hopkins University professor of Italian literature, will launch Project Civility with a lecture at 8 p.m. Sept. 29 at the Student Center. Forni, who is a civility expert, directs a similar initiative at Johns Hopkins, and his work has helped launch like-minded projects around the country. “Civility, good manners, and politeness are not trivial, because they do the everyday busy work of goodness,” said Forni. “Devices of mass distraction,” as he calls them, are a particular source of disruptive behavior: leaving class to take a cell-phone call, surfing the internet, or watching an online show instead of paying attention to an instructor…

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