Emotional Literacy/Intelligence

For my new literacies project this semester, chose to research emotional literacy. I have found this topic to be interesting and engaging. Even though I have never heard of this area of literacy before, I am very interested to complete my research on the topic. I remember having weekly social and emotional lessons when I was in elementary school. Although I did not find much use in them because I never had any emotional or social difficulties until middle school, I can see through my research that these lessons benefited me and my entire class during that time and also into the future. Daniel Goleman has done a lot of research on emotional intelligence and authored several books on the topic. A lot of the information that I have included in my project so far has come from his website. He considers five domains when defining emotional intelligence:

• Knowing your emotions.
• Managing your own emotions.
• Motivating yourself.
• Recognizing and understanding other people's emotions.
• Managing relationships, ie., managing the emotions of others.

From this list, it seems obvious why having emotional literacy is important in school and everyday life. The recent emphasis on emotional intelligence has led schools to implement Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs. These programs, which emphasize self-awareness and making sound social decisions, have been proven to increase pro-social behavior by nine or ten percentile points, while negative social behaviors decrease by about the same amount. Most importantly, especially for administrators who decide how much time should be spent on each subject, SEL increases academic achievement by 11 percentile points. It also works better for students who need it most, effectively closing the seemingly ever-present achievement gap. I found the above information in a short video of Goleman talking about and advocating for SEL (view it here). These types of lessons can support students who experience depression or struggle with bullies, and also have long-term benefits. A lot of the more recent information I have found about emotional intelligence relates to controlling emotions in the workplace and establishing rapport with coworkers and clients. It is obvious that there are many positive long-term ramifications of SEL. I am very excited to find out more about emotional literacy and the SEL program, hopefully applying what I have learned to my teaching in the future.

Most of my time spent on this project has been dedicated to researching emotional literacy, but I have spent some time compiling the information on my first prezi. It has proven much more difficult than I thought. I still have not gotten used to the different editing tools, and find myself zooming in and out of the presentation unintentionally, along with changing the size of the titles and text when I am trying to just move around the presentation. However, I believe that as I spend more time with the program I will be able to master all of the different tools that are available. Another thing that I am having difficulty with is condensing the information that I have gathered into a presentation form. I have written long paragraphs that are relevant to the topic, but are not very audience-friendly. I will have to continue to brainstorm different ways of effectively presenting the valuable information that I have learned.