Teach your students how to think, listen, learn, trust and communicate

Research shows that emotional intelligence may be more important than traditional intelligence in determining life success (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002).

Research shows knowledge workers (those who do more than provide information) require high-level cognitive skills for managing, interpreting, validating, transforming, communicating, and acting on information. Valued skills include such nonroutine analytic skills such as abstract reasoning, problem solving, communication, and collaboration (Karoly & Panis, 2004).

Research shows that new job positions require higher levels of interpersonal and problem-solving skills because their work entails higher levels of human interaction and personalized responses to people’s wants and needs (Carnevale & Desrochers, 2003).

"The elements of emotional intelligence – being aware of our feelings and handling disruptive emotions well, empathizing with how others feel, and being skillful in handling our relationships – are crucial abilities for effective living." –Daniel Goleman, Edutopia

When teachers are asked: “What do you teach?”, the majority just respond with the subject or grade level that we teach: math, history, English, fourth grade, freshmen, and so on. These responses undermine the huge responsibility each one of us has as an educator. While we are each formally educated in how to teach our specialty or subject areas, there is a much bigger area that we are responsible for each time students walk into our classroom: Life Skills.

It is our job to develop our students’ Social and Emotional Life Skills so they learn to live and work well with others in a harmonious way, whether in school or on the job. This social and emotional learning prepares students for Life Skills that include resolving conflict, networking, communicating, cooperating, concentrating, working with others, and listening.

Next time someone asks you: “What do you teach?”, you can answer them honestly with some version of: “I teach students how to think, listen, learn, trust, communicate, love, and believe.” What other career path offers such rich opportunities?

TIPS: Incorporating Social and Emotional Life Skills in Your Classroom

What are Social and Emotional Life Skills? Students learn how to be smart for life, improve their chances of job advancement, and create happiness when they have a chance to develop socially and emotionally. Social and Emotional Life Skills give students a chance to educate their hearts as well as their minds. Practicing social/emotional skills in the classroom helps transfer the same skills and achievements to the real world.

What are Social and Emotional Life Skills?
Students learn how to be smart for life, improve their chances of job advancement, and create happiness when they have a chance to develop socially and emotionally. Social and Emotional Life Skills give students a chance to education their hearts as well as their minds. Practicing social/emotional skills in the classroom helps transfer the same skills and achievements to the real world.

Below is an abbreviated list of Life Skills related to social and emotional development. By teaching these Life Skills, we as educators help students to become healthy and responsible adults who:

• Cooperate
• Practice patience and persistence
• Know how to manage their time
• Wish to work together for the common good
• Are flexible
• Can set and meet goals
• Are able to express their emotions
• Know how to trust and be trusted
• Stay focused
• Care for and about others

We would all appreciate practicing such skills, and seeing others model such skills, in any circumstance that life offers, whether professionally or personally. Teaching students these life skills can become part of your curriculum and is worth the payoff for you as well as your students in the long run.

New research indicates that students learn best when they have a balance of social, emotional, and academic skills. Neural pathways develop in the brains of young children and continue to branch through positive social and emotional communication with others. This neural development must be fostered and encouraged throughout school, or little branching will occur. Educators are recognizing that students who have received a “traditional” education (strictly academic) are less equipped to face the challenges that jobs and adult life offer. Seizing opportunities to teach Social and Emotional Life Skills in your classroom improves students’ personal and professional futures.

Take every opportunity to teach Social and Emotional Life Skills to your students each chance you get. Life Skills can easily become part of your daily curriculum. You can even advise students of which Life Skills they will be practicing.

Here are some specific suggestions for teaching some of the Life Skills listed above

Elementary (Math)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused
Put students in groups of 4 and give each group 6 to 8 problems to solve. Give groups enough time to decide the best way to solve the problems correctly, check their work to ensure that answers are correct, and demonstrate understanding to the class.

Middle (Math – Word Problems)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused
In small groups, each student is to come up with a word problem and “teach” group mates how to break down and solve it.

Junior High (Mathematical Operators)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused
In small groups, students put on a small skit where each person is a mathematical operator (e.g. parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) and briefly discusses his or her “role” in mathematical expressions.

High School (Trigonometry)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused
In small groups, students discuss the relationships, definitions, similarities, and differences between sines, cosines, chords, and tangents and come up with a problem that demonstrates a relationship type.

Elementary (Life Science)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused/Setting and Meeting Goals/Time Management
Give each student 5 to 10 plastic animal replicas. Have students group the replicas (by color, size, species, etc.) In teams of 3 or 4, have students put on two minute skits where each one of them chooses and plays one of the animals and how that animal would behave in its natural habitat.

Middle (Life Science)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused/Care for and about Others/ Express Their Emotions/Work together for the Common Good/Flexibility
Same as Elementary, but add in a dilemma for one of the animals (for example, the frog has no food) and have students work together to come up with a solution.

Junior High (Weather Conditions)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused
Have students individually chart the morning and evening weather conditions and temperature readings at their homes for 10 days. Put students in small groups, and have them chart the average daily temperature and conditions. Then have them write a summary discussing the scientific reasons for the variations.

High School (Physics)
Cooperation/Setting and Meeting Goals/Staying Focused/Practice Patience and Persistence/Care for and about Others
Have students individually come up with a design for a bridge, then discuss their designs in small groups. Give each group toothpicks/popsicle sticks and glue, and instruct them to create a bridge using ideas from everyone in the group. The strength of each group’s bridge is tested when weight is added in increments. Students create a summary debriefing their success or the shortcomings of their design.

Carnevale, A. P., & Desrochers, D. M. (2003). Standards for what? The economic roots of K-16 reform. Princeton, NJ : Educational Testing Service.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Karoly, L. A. & Panis, C. W. A. (2004). The 21st century at work: Forces shaping the future workforce and workplace in the United States. (3rd ed.). Santa Monica: CA: RAND Corporation/U.S. Department of Labor.

Source: The above tips are based on PLS's graduate course Teaching the Skills of the 21st Century®. For more information see "Related Graduate Course" to the right.

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