What is Emotional Intelligence?

The ability to handle personal emotions and the emotions of others in a smart manner is emotional intelligence (EI). Developing emotional intelligence is important for students as it will help them learn and think effectively in the classroom while managing personal emotional challenges and conflicts that may arise with other classmates. There are five factors that make up emotional intelligence: self -awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence Skills

The first skill of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. The child must understand the situation that is causing a specific emotion that is usually uncomfortable. As self-regulation sets in, the child will begin to determine how to react to the emotions they are feeling. Self-awareness of emotions can greatly impact the way the child’s reaction – these two skills are healthy in developing an early emotional intelligence.

The third skill in emotional intelligence development is self-motivation. Self-motivation cannot be taught, and it may look different in children. While practicing the importance of accomplishing a goal can be uncomfortable work, it builds self-motivation in children.

Furthermore, empathy is crucial for students to learn how to deal and accept the feelings of others. Developing a skill in recognizing others emotions can help a child navigate personal relationships with other children and ultimately develop appropriate social skills.

Each of the five skills making up emotional intelligence is important independent of one another, but when working all together a child’s emotional intelligence is healthy.

How Teachers can Model EI in the Classroom

Modeling instruction is an effective method for teachers to guide students through new concepts and skills. While students watch a teacher demonstrate a concept step by step, students mimic the teacher’s actions to achieve an understanding of the concept being taught. Students also watch teachers’ actions in social situations inside and outside of the classroom between students and other teachers.

The teacher plays an important role in modeling healthy emotional intelligence in the classroom. Teachers can institute daily morning meetings with students to provide the opportunity for those in the class to share and discuss emotional situations that may be occurring in the classroom. These meetings are a time for the class to build a sense of community, where trust is built between the teacher and students and among the students as a class.

Another method of modeling healthy EI is to guide students with journal writing. Writing tasks for students can help develop self-awareness with their emotions. The topics could involve emotional challenges that require students to determine a solution that would effectively meet the proposed challenge.

Classroom jobs provide an emphasis on students’ responsibility. The teacher identifies the jobs and demonstrates the proper way to handle the classroom duties, allowing the class community to run effectively. Student jobs create a level of reliability among students in the class. For example, if a student were to be absent for the day, the other students would have to use problem-solving skills to fill the position for the day.

When teachers model and allow creatively in the classroom, it helps develop an understanding of flexibility in life. Creativity with assignments is a great place to start. For example, during a morning meeting, teachers can begin the day by creating a class situation that students must invent a creative solution for. Teachers can lead the students into a discussion and have the class hear the many options developed by the students. There are many times in a classroom when a teacher must shift gears quickly and the students must also be ready for a change in schedule, and these opportunities rely upon creative thinking among all individuals in the class.

Teachers can model the following seven tools with students to encourage strong emotional intelligence. The first is the importance of eye contact. Achieving eye contact develops a person’s authentic personality and strength communication skills between two people. Another great exercise for students is to practice how a person’s face looks when expressing a specific emotion. It is important for students to understand how someone else perceives the look on a person’s face. The reaction a student makes with their face and their body’s posture develops the ability to read one another’s body language.

Body language tells people how a person is feeling. When reading someone’s facial reaction or body language, it allows students to determine the emotion felt by the person. Moreover, teachers are always reminding students to listen during instruction. In addition to this instruction, it is important that teachers help students understand the tone of a person’s voice and how listening and reacting to the different tone will help with understanding the appropriate emotional reaction by a student.

Students are constantly watching the emotional reactions a teacher displays to the various situations that occur during the school day. The teacher’s emotional reactions may be mimicked during a situation between students. The eyes and ears of students are focused on the teacher at all times.

How Administrators can Model EI Outside of the Classroom

Administrators carry the responsibility of creating a school culture that fosters a positive environment for academic growth and safe social behaviors for all students and teachers. It is also the goal of the administrator to create an emotionally balanced atmosphere for the teachers.

Administrators must manage emotions of teachers effectively to solve daily problems. Leaders that are self-aware of others’ emotions can navigate various situations that arise in a school and lessen stress levels throughout the school environment.

School administrators are emotional coaches for both students and teachers. The administrator can use the following five strategies to improve emotional intelligence:

1. Focus on the reaction or response to a specific event. The response selected will determine the outcome. Responses should be made with discipline and intent, not reactive or impulsive.
2. The level of empathy expressed by a leader is extremely important. The school’s faculty must have confidence in the leader’s communication skills and how the leader connects with the faculty.
3. School leaders must be able to determine the difference between a teacher’s opinion and feelings.
4. Administrators must be aware of triggers that insert emotions into decisions before taking time to consider the best course of action.
5. An effective school leader balances patience and persistence. The leader must be attuned with the feelings of others before making decisions that will affect others.

An effective understanding of emotional intelligence for an administrator and teacher will build trust and create a school culture that will allow teachers to instruct students effectively and develop students’ positive emotional intelligence.

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What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (or EI) can be most simply defined as a person’s ability to correctly identify a certain emotion they are feeling, understanding the reasoning why one is feeling that way, and appropriately managing the expression of that emotion.

It also means that a person can correctly identify emotions expressed by others. People with a high level of emotional intelligence are successful leaders. A person who can manage one’s emotions is much more productive than a person who is not capable of such. Emotional intelligence is crucial to developing relationships with others and achieving goals.

Elements of Emotional Intelligence

There are five key elements of emotional intelligence according to Dr. Daniel Goleman (1995): 1) Self-Awareness; 2) Self-Regulation; 3) Motivation; 4) Empathy; and 5) Social Skills. Goleman developed a framework of these elements that define intelligence; and it requires the effective management of all five elements to develop a strong level of emotional intelligence. Let’s take a look at each of these elements of emotional intelligence:

1. Self-Awareness – this is the most essential element of emotional intelligence, as it is crucial to developing all other elements of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is the ability to understand and manage one’s emotions. People who are self aware are also extremely capable of reflecting on their thoughts, words, and actions in honest ways with the goal to truly identify their capabilities and their weaknesses. Therefore, self-awareness takes confidence and authenticity.
2. Self-Regulation – the ability to manage your emotions. As mentioned previously, people who are self-aware are able to self regulate. They employ thinking through a situation before reacting impulsively or without weighing the pros and cons.
3. Motivation – the ability to stay the course to achieve a goal. A person with emotional intelligence is motivated to complete tasks to achieve a goal.
4. Empathy – the ability to identify and recognize the emotional needs of others. It takes someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence to empathize with others. This essential element is crucial to the development of the last element of the emotional intelligence framework.
5. Social Skills – the ability to relate to others, communicate effectively, and develop relationships.

Importance of Emotional Intelligence

Emotions are at play every moment of our lives. Emotions can be quite disruptive in a person’s life. Emotions can prevent someone from achieving a task or a goal. Therefore, the ability to identify, understand, and manage one’s emotions is an extremely crucial part of developing deeper learning competencies, which are essential skills to be prepared successfully for life.

Bitter and Loney (2015) describe “deeper learning” as the combination of a deeper understanding of core academic content, the ability to apply that understanding to novel problems and situations, and the development of a range of competencies, including people skills and self-management. Therefore, the better able you are at managing your emotions, the more productive you will become in succeeding in the achievement of academic, work, and life goals.

How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in Your Students

It is important to note that although a person’s IQ is fixed after a certain age, a person can continue to learn emotional intelligence elements and strengthen overall emotional intelligence throughout one’s life. All five elements of the emotional intelligence framework can be taught in your classroom. Here are a few strategies that can be easily incorporated into any lesson, subject, or classroom:

Self-Awareness

To develop self-awareness in your students, ask them to journal daily. Students could be instructed to write about their thoughts and feelings upon arriving at school, before dismissal, and even after each lesson. Journaling will help students practice and develop self-awareness by taking regular account of thoughts and feelings throughout the day. You can have students keep their entries private, ask for share outs at times, or use this type of reflective writing as a writing assignment having students respond to a writing prompt or discussion post. You can encourage students to keep a diary or journal at home and continue the practice outside of the classroom.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation can be promoted by having students regularly practice mindfulness in the classroom. Have students take breaks to practice calming strategies throughout the day such as deep breathing exercises, visualization practices, yoga poses, and even use of meditation. Self-regulation is about being able to maintain self-control. Students need to know what their calm self feels like so that when anxiety or anger takes over, he or she knows what state of mind they need to return to so that they can maintain self-regulation of emotions.

Motivation

Motivation can be developed by having students regularly practice goal setting. Students should be instructed to set an overall personal goal and academic goal to complete by the end of the school year. Help students understand that monitoring progress along the way is key to staying focused and motivated towards achieving the goal, as well as knowing how close you are at achieving the goal. At the beginning of each grading period, have students create a 9 week strategy of how they will work towards this overall annual goal. Ask the students to make sure they have some measurable way of monitoring their progress of the goal.

Empathy

Empathy can be tricky to teach but not impossible. Helping students learn how to put themselves in another person’s shoes can be a difficult concept to grasp for some students. Start the process by having regular scenarios presented to students. Students must be working in small groups or teams and are presented with a fictitious challenge. Each student plays a role with predetermined dialogue. One person is asking for help or feedback about a problem. Each team member must read their assigned dialogue which consists of a variety of comments ranging from extremely polite constructive feedback to rude and inappropriate feedback. Have the team process each response and discuss how a person might feel when presented with each comment. This exercise is important in helping students develop empathy and override impulsive and judgemental comments.

Social Skills

Essential to developing strong social skills is the development of the abilities to contribute meaningfully toward the goals of a team as well as communicate effectively. Having students work in teams or with partners will help students develop communication and collaboration skills necessary for successful development of relationships. You can structure group activities to include a variety of discussion posts and prompts. You can have specific roles for each team and regularly rotate changing team members in these roles. You can also vary the goals that each team must complete. Structured debates and mock conflicts can help students develop the skills necessary to mediate problems and develop problem-solving strategies.

References:

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.

Bitter, C., & Loney, E. (2015). Deeper Learning: Improving Student Outcomes for College, Career, and Civic Life. Policy Brief. Education Policy Center at American Institutes for Research.

*Updated January, 2021

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