Thursday, August 18, 2005

The Importance of an Emotional IQ....

It makes sense. If emotional problems negatively impact academic progress, then helping kids improve their social/emotional skills should boost academic progress.
Read about it here, and consider how this research might impact your classroom. Will it inspire teachers to commit to daily class meetings? I can only dream!

3 comments:

Fred said...

Good article. It really made sense, especially the part about bullying.

It's good that Illinois is blazing the path in this area; I wonder how the accountability will work, though. Is it a "feel-good" initiative, or are teachers actually being given tools to implement the changes?

Let's hope it's the latter.

Anonymous said...

I onced taught at a middle school whose mission statement included the goal of having students "feel successful". Wouldn't students feel successful once they had succeeded? While I will certainly look for the study mentioned in the op-ed piece you linked to, I remain a skeptic. For research that came to a different conclusion, read "One Nation Under Therapy". A review can be seen here: http://www.cblpolicyinstitute.org/onenationunder.htm

Mrs. Ris said...

The kinds of social/emotional training addressed in the study seems more focused than "helping kids feel successful"...but, you're right, A look at the actual research will be helpful. As sited in the article, this comprehensive curriculum included anti-bullying,resisting peer pressure, etc., so it appears on the surface to be more than "feel good" fluff.

Of course we want our kids to feel successful....and that's what happens when they succeed! Good point.