One of the most important outcomes in schools where emotional competency is taught is a drop in the fighting and suspension rates. As they acquire emotional competencies, individual students demonstrate gains in academic performance. Personal benefits accrue also. Students are more skilled at making friends and are better family members. In addition, they develop into more desirable workers, mates, bosses and citizens.
Here are some of the advantages identified in each of these areas. They are the summary of evaluation results:
Emotional Self-Awareness
- Improvement in recognizing and naming own emotions
- Better able to understand the causes of feelings
- Recognizing the difference between feelings and action
Managing Emotions
- Better frustration tolerance and anger management
- Fewer verbal put-downs, fights, and classroom disruptions
- Better able to express anger appropriately, without fighting
- Fewer suspensions and expulsions
- Less aggressive or self-destructive behavior
- More positive feelings about self, school, and family
- Better at handling stress
- Less loneliness and social anxiety
Harnessing Emotions Productively
- More responsible
- Better able to focus on the task at hand and pay attention
- Less impulsive, more self-control
- Improved scores on achievement
Empathy: Reading Emotions
- Better able to take another person’s perspective
- Improved empathy and sensitivity to others’ feelings
- Better at listening to others
Handling Relationships
- Increased ability to analyze and understand relationships
- Better at resolving conflicts and negotiating disagreements
- Better at solving problems in relationships
- More assertive and skilled at communicating
- More popular and outgoing; friendly and involved with peers
- More sought out by peers
- More concerned and considerate
- More pro-social and harmonious in groups
- More sharing, cooperation, and helpfulness
- More democratic
These conclusions have been compiled from objective evaluations comparing experimental and control groups and by measuring the behavior of students before and after receiving instruction geared to developing emotional competencies.
With these kinds of outcomes at stake the argument for helping students acquire broad emotional competencies and higher levels of emotional intelligence are compelling. The value more than offsets the effort. The rewards far outshine the cost. These are the skills and attributes that transcend all other learning and permit your students to achieve at higher levels academically and socially than ever before.
Credit : innervoice