Developing my EQ

One of my four professional development goals this year is to increase my emotional intelligence. EQ, as it is also called, is a concept made widely popular by Daniel Goleman in his 1997 book Emotional Intelligence, though as a science reporter and psychologist he has researched many other topics. In no small part, the idea of EQ is influenced by the theory of multiple intelligences, which itself presented an original challenge to and alternative from the idea of IQ, as developed by our friend Howard Gardner in 1983 at Harvard's Project Zero Institute (which is also the source of the Teaching for Understanding model used by TBS).

I picked this as a goal based on the data I received from the "360 degree" assessment tools reported back to me during the week I spent in Atlanta this past July at the NAIS Fellowship for Aspiring Heads. The data juxtaposed my view of myself with the views of me held by the Head of School, a group of other administrators, and a group of teachers; my analysis of those different views, as well as some of the direct, anonymous comments, convinced me that in order to become a more effective leader, I needed to increase my understanding of how I experience and respond to my emotions.

Fortunately, there is a fabulous organization right here in the Bay Area that specializes in developing EQ in individuals, families, schools, corporations, and other institutions. Six Seconds has a wide array of tools and trainings, from a Social-Emotional Learning ("SEL" in EQ terms) curriculum for schools called Self-Science, to social-emotional profile assessment tools, to a program to certify people as EQ trainers. Today (and tomorrow) they hosted a conference on EQ at Synapse School in Menlo Park, which I was fortunate to be able to attend (TBS' commitment to professional development never ceases to amaze me!).

In his original text, Goleman breaks emotional intelligence into five distinct

areas - self-awareness, altruism, motivation, empathy, and the ability to love and be loved. Six Seconds recasts these ideas into a two-part model. The first part of the model has three "pursuits": know yourself (awareness), choose yourself (intention), and give yourself (connection and purpose). The second part of the model breaks these pursuits down into specific competencies: enhance emotional literacy, recognize patterns, consequential thinking, navigate emotions, intrinsic motivation, optimism, increase empathy, and pursue nobel goals. By taking the SEI assessment, an individual can identify which competencies are strengths, and which are areas for more growth.

I've been carefully tracking emotional experiences I've had at work this year, using a form I created based on one I saw during my time in Atlanta this summer. Today, I was able to make another jump forward in thinking about how I'm paying attention to my EQ experiences; since enhancing emotional literacy and recognizing patterns are among the lower-scoring competencies on my self-assessment, I began looking for information to help me develop in those specific areas. I was thrilled to discover Plutchik's circumplex model of emotions, which I am now going to adapt into some sort of tracking form. I also realized that I need to begin not just tracking my EQ experiences, but looking back at the entries to discover my patterns, which I will then be able shift.

I hope to eventually begin working with the elementary faculty on the idea of teaching emotional intelligence. We already do great work using concepts drawn from Responsive Classroom and Positive Discipline to create a program that contains many intentional curricular components, and is responsive to the social-emotional needs of students. For now, however, I'm just working on, and talking about working on, myself.

The brain is a fascinating place...

Brain calistenics for abstract ideas, by Benedict Carey

For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first — the theorems, the order of operations, Newton’s laws — then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they’re up against. Like the ballplayer who can “read” pitches early, or the chess master who “sees” the best move, they’ve developed a great eye.

Now, a small group of cognitive scientists is arguing that schools and students could take far more advantage of this same bottom-up ability, called perceptual learning. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine, after all, and when focused properly, it can quickly deepen a person’s grasp of a principle, new studies suggest. Better yet, perceptual knowledge builds automatically: There’s no reason someone with a good eye for fashion or wordplay cannot develop an intuition for classifying rocks or mammals or algebraic equations, given a little interest or motivation.

Thanks to Sima for the tip to this article!

Ralph Cantor on drug and alcohol awareness

Last night, Ralph Cantor spoke to the middle school parents about drug and alcohol awareness, and the biology of the brain. His work coincides with and compliments the sexual health and puberty education, and street smarts program that are also currently in process in the middle school. Comments via email from parents this morning include "Ralph Cantor's session on teen drug and alcohol use last night was fantastic! I now feel armed with good, research-based messages to give our son. It's great to know that TBS is drug-free, but no matter what high school he attends, unfortunately, peer use of drugs and alcohol will be part of the milieu," and "The talk last night was AMAZING – one of the best yet!!" Click here to download the powerpoint.

YouTube has a nine-part video of a presentation that Ralph did last year at a PTA meeting for Emerson Elementary. It gets good (i.e. into the neurology) at the 3:00 minute mark of the video below, which is part two.

Video game model as learning tool?

This article was written by Dr. Judy Willis, the neuropsychologist who hosted the webinar that I attended with several TBS faculty last week (props to Tanya for sending around the article). Here's the first three paragraphs of the article, to whet your appetite.

A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool

By Judy Willis MD

The popularity of video games is not the enemy of education, but rather a model for best teaching strategies. Games insert players at their achievable challenge level and reward player effort and practice with acknowledgement ofincremental goal progress, not just final product. The fuel for this process is the pleasure experience related to the release of dopamine.

Dopamine Motivation

The human brain, much like that of most mammals, has hardwired physiological responses that had survival value at some point in evolutionary progression. The dopamine-reward system is fueled by the brain's recognition of making a successful prediction, choice, or behavioral response.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that, when released in higher than usual amounts, goes beyond the synapse and flows to other regions of the brain producing a powerful pleasure response. This is a deep satisfaction, such as quenching a long thirst. After making a prediction, choice, or action, and receiving feedback that it was correct, the reward from the release of dopamine prompts the brain seek future opportunities to repeat the action. For animal survival, this promotes life or species-sustaining choices and behaviors, such as following a new scent that leads to a mate or a meal and remembering that scent the next time it is present.

Executive Function and Neurobiology

During lunch and recess today, a group of seven faculty and I gathered to watch a free webinar from ASCD called "Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functioning." Executive functioning includes important higher-order skills such as analyzing, prioritizing, decision making, delay of immediate gratification, judgment, tolerance, empathy, and organization, and occurs in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. Neural networks in the PFC are the last part of the brain to mature, and are at their peak period of growth and formation between the ages of 9-16 (though the PFC is in a state of constant maturation from the age of about 5 to about 25). No wonder, then, that so many students in upper elementary, middle school and underclassmen in high school struggle to stay organized, track their materials, complete work and in general manage their responsibilities at school and home; there's a neurobiological reason for their poor decision making! One implication is for schools; it is important to promote the development of neuroplasticity, which leads to increased executive functioning, by providing activities and opportunities to build flexible perspectives, learn to interpret and apply information to new open-ended tasks, search for multiple ways to solve problems, and develop metacognition - which obviously can't be accomplished in a teach-to-the-test environment. Another implication is for parents - how you choose to allow your child to spend his/her free time has a direct impact on the ways in which the neurological wiring of the prefrontal cortex is progressing, and thus how your child's brain is literally being formed. As one teacher pointed out in our discussion afterwards, if a child is playing video games for hours on the weekend, those neural pathways are getting tremendous reinforcement while others are neglected. In turn, this shift towards more complex digital lives for children has implications for schools - for example, if those are the neural pathways that are strongest for a child, rather than saying "no screens in school," we need to intentionally use screens to introduce both skills and concepts that we wish children to master. This is a perspective echoed by some of the interviewees in Monday's AP article "iPads take a place next to crayons in kindergarten" (sent to me by a friend who is a preschool teacher - thanks Lars!), and supported by the evidence from this webinar.

The host of the webinar was Dr. Judy Willis. While you can find the handouts of the webinar available for download here, I recommend you check out her great website, which includes information about the intersection of neurobiology and education.