Status Updates From Permission to Feel

Employees say they feel inspired about 25% of the time when they have supervisors with low emotional intelligence, and about 75% of the time under managers with high emotional intelligence. That’s a huge difference. Think of productivity and all the creative ideas that will exist in the emotionally intelligent workplace, and now ask yourself why they don’t exist in more workplaces.

On the surface, all our workplace interactions are about work: planning a meeting, developing a product with a team, navigating a contract. But these interactions take place within relationships; everything that happens at work is, at heart, an emotional moment. Emotions shape our decision-making, especially in group settings. Even the emotions of 1 person can facilitate or derail the mood & effectiveness of a team.

In order for SEL to be truly effective and transformative in schools, it has to be integrated into everything and practiced by everyone, teachers & administrators as well as students. SEL practices can’t just be a seminar or a 10-minute morning meeting or a once a month lesson. SEL has to be integrated into leadership, faculty meetings, family engagement, hiring procedures and policies.

Chilling & disheartening report of lack of regard for emotions by school administrators- this excerpt from a letter from a head psychologist working for a network of private schools:

“I was told just yesterday by a principal that nobody in our network cares about a child’s confidence, emotional well-being, mental health, integrity, [or] overall success as a person… they only care about test scores.”

“A key job of a school is to give students new things to love…it reminds us that what teachers really teach is themselves- their contagious passion for their subjects and students. It reminds us that children learn from people they love, and that love in this context means willing the good of another, and offering active care for the whole person.”
- NYT Columnist David Brooks

The promotion of social emotional learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. It is not a distraction from the ‘real work’ of math&English; it is how instruction can succeed. It brings together a traditional conservative emphasis on local control & student character, and a progressive emphasis on the creative art of teaching & emotional needs of students.
-Aspen Inst. 2019

Another helpful strategy for families at home is making a Family Charter- you written document or packed that details how the family would like to feel. It’s created by asking 3 questions:
1. How do we want to feel as a family?
2. What things can we do to experience those feelings?
3. What can we do when we are not living the charter?
Make sure children are highly involved in making the charter.