Teaching Emotions: A Different Approach to Ending School Violence

A teacher at Cunningham Elementary School in Austin, Texas, 

teaches a lesson about emotions to a class of students. 

Photo by Adrian Uribarra/CASEL.

 

A growing network of programs is teaching kids how to understand and express their emotions. Among their results: decreased aggression and violence.

 

by Katherine Gustafson

 

In the wake of the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the media has trumpeted the predictable calls for tighter gun controls and widespread speculation about the shooter’s mental health. But those calling for change have done remarkably little soul-searching about the education system that allowed such a disturbed individual to wander through its hallways speaking little and avoiding eye contact, apparently completely ignored.

 

 “He was very withdrawn,” Tracy Dunn, 20, told USA Today of shooter Adam Lanza, with whom she graduated from Newtown High School. “He would always have his head down walking to class with his briefcase—kind of scurrying ... He never sat down or said anything to kids at his locker. He was just there in the background.”

 

Teachers and administrators must have noticed his unusual behavior. Perhaps some were even concerned. But in a school environment fixated on the acquisition of knowledge, young people’s emotional wellbeing and social competence are too often overlooked.

“Maybe if someone had tried to reach out to Adam—maybe he needed a friend—maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” Dunn said. “He’s just one kid who slipped through the cracks.”

Closing up the cracks

“The cracks” have become all too familiar in our education system, in large part because our schools reflect our broader culture of competition, conflict, and obsession with quantifiable success.

As in our larger society, our children learn in school that being a good or kind person is not as important as being a smart or a winning one. They learn that knowing how to work with other people is not as important as coming up with the right answer oneself. There is no emphasis placed on developing the skills to identify emotions and seek help when they are overwhelming.

Could the tragedy at Sandy Hook have been prevented if Adam Lanza had grown up going to schools where he was encouraged to express his emotions and solve conflicts creatively—or better yet, trained and supported by his classmates and teachers to do so?

It is, of course, impossible to say, but it is not far fetched to posit that a broad-based intervention designed to reverse the problematic dynamic in our schools could shift their culture and reach their students in a deeper and more attentive way.

Social and emotional learning

Such an intervention is in fact currently underway in several school districts around the country. Social and Emotion Learning, or SEL, is an educational approach that strengthens students’ ability to work effectively with others, build the skills to manage themselves, and work through conflict in constructive ways.

For the full article, please go here:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/teaching-emotions-different-approach-ending-school-violence-sandy-hook#comment-829751159?utm_source=wkly20130315&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mrComment

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 "CASEL’s ambitious agenda aims at nothing less than making Social and Emotional Learning an essential piece of every American child’s basic education."

Comment on this aricle: "I just hope that, with time, western positive psychology can catch up to Buddhist psychology, and that programmes like this open the door to much further, much greater, and much more transformative possibilities. The culture and structures of our societies, and how we learn to 'be' in the world begins in our schools."