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 EMOTIONALLY LITERATE BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT

MODULE 1 – IDENTIFYING AND LABELLING YOUR FEELINGS

Introduction

During recent years there has been a wealth of research in the area of emotional literacy.  This has led to what can only be described as a plethora of resources and materials for teachers to use in order to attempt to develop these kinds of skills in the pupils they teach.  The government’s agenda of social inclusion and the development from the DfES of a social, emotional and behavioural skills curriculum for students throughout all key stages, has resulted in a recognition of the fact that these are vital skills for children and young people to acquire if they are going to eventually be academically successful and be able to function within a range of social contexts.  However, in my view what seems to be missing here is the need to focus, prior to delivering such curriculums, on the actual skills that teachers themselves have.  It seems logical to me that if teachers are emotionally literate or ‘intelligent’, then they will generally have greater impact upon the pupils that they teach and they will certainly be able to foster the kinds of skills that we are looking for more successfully.  

I would like to highlight from the outset, the fact that what will also make a difference to teachers themselves is the emotional climate of the school in which they teach and whether or not the school presents as an emotionally literate, safe and nurturing environment.  I would suggest that in order for us all to develop these skills, we need to be working within non-judgemental and democratic contexts. Consequently, the main focus here will be on presenting you with opportunities to further understand this concept of emotional literacy and to reflect upon, think about and perhaps further develop your own skills.  The aims here are really quite simple:  overall I’d like you to be able to really understand what it is to be an emotionally literate person and to gain a further insight into your own development in this area and the ways in which you may wish to further develop your competences in order be both successful or more successful in the classroom and also in your own social contexts. 

So why do I think that this is important for teachers?  Well, we know that children’s emotional literacy is related to their mental health so it would seem logical to assume that the same relationship would exist for their teachers, parents and carers as well.  If we go back as far as 1989 and the Elton Report, we can see that the role of positive relationships in the teaching and learning environment was highlighted even then and specifically the ways in which teachers could be and needed to be, fully effective. I quote,

‘To be fully effective, teachers need the ability to relate to young people, to encourage them in good behaviour and learning and to deal calmly but firmly with in appropriate or disruptive behaviour, establishing good relationships with pupils, encouraging them to learn and to behave well, have always been essential parts of the teacher’s work.  This cannot be achieved by talking at children, but by working with them.’ (Elton Report 1969 – Page 67-68)

Now I know that this seems to be stating the obvious but developing and maintaining positive and caring relationships with pupils is important and the emotional connection in social education, I feel, is just as important as pupil’s cognitive education.  However, the kind of conflict between caring and the pressures of the market place are a cause of emotional dissonance and stress amongst teachers.  There are enormous difficulties in dealing with and in coping with so-called ‘difficult children’ in stressful situations on a daily basis. Teachers are somehow expected, as if by magic, to be able to emotionally sustain themselves and remain secure, confident and emotionally intact even when faced with many pressures and stresses, not only from the pupils and the way in which they behave themselves but also from the plethora of initiatives which seem to be pouring out from the DfES.

I want to acknowledge the fact that being a teacher and managing others’ emotions and behaviour on a daily basis in this really intensive manner involves a great deal of emotional labour.  This is perhaps the main reason why I feel that it is absolutely essential for teachers to have the opportunity and time to both self reflect and nurture their own skills, their own emotional competences and ability to cope effectively on a daily basis.  So, in this initial session I am hoping there will be an opportunity for you to begin to consider your own levels of emotional literacy and to begin to understand the need and importance of being able to identify and label your own feelings.  If we don’t develop these skills then I fear that this will have, or may already be having, a negative impact upon our ability to develop relationships, not just with the pupils but with each other. I would also suggest, further to this, that our relationships with each other and with ourselves are what we should focus on initially if we are really going to be effective as teachers in the classroom on a longer and more sustained basis.  We cannot manage the behaviour and emotional states of our students unless we can firstly effectively manage our own behaviours and responses.

So, in this session, the main aim is to consider the nature of emotional literacy, what it is, what it means for us and to us and to also then reflect upon our own skills in this area.   But, before we actually turn to ourselves, it may be useful to break the ice a little.

Activity 1

Icebreaker

In this first icebreaker activity, I would like everyone just to turn to the person sitting next to them and to question each other in order to find out three things that you both have in common. Discuss in detail and to try and find out three things that you both have in common/that you are both interested in.  It may be that you’ve both been to the same place on holiday; it may be that you both like drinking malt whisky; whatever it is I would then like you to feed that information back to the whole group.

Activity 2

Now that we have introduced ourselves to one another and hopefully feel a little more relaxed, I would like to continue with the second activity which I hope will further clarify this notion of emotional literacy.  I call this a ‘story time for grownups’ and it is a story.  I know teachers are very often required to read stories to students and they obviously expect them to listen and pay attention and possibly even answer questions afterwards and discuss some of the issues raised.  That is exactly what we are going to do in this session so I would like you to listen very, very carefully.  Here’s the story and I really would reinforce with you the importance of listening as there will be some activities for you to undertake afterwards!

“Once upon a time (or should I say quite a while ago) there was a big storm on the island of Ingaros in the South Pacific which was a great shame really, given the fact that Maureen and Angus Reed had just arrived for their annual two-week break.  On that particular morning, they had been out for a pre-lunch walk along the northern coastal path which was quite a good idea when reflecting upon the sort of diet they had been coping with at the all-inclusive hotel.  Those sorts of breakfasts were certainly not the ‘norm’ at home and would require at least three hours of forced marching in order to burn off the immense calorie intake.

As they walked along the northern ridge, the sun was beating down upon their heads and both Maureen and Angus felt the need to stop for a drink of water.  ‘I can feel myself dehydrating’, said Angus.  ‘It must be the effects of last night’s alcohol intake’.   He gulped down the water and then handed the bottle to Maureen.  ‘Thanks’, she said somewhat sarcastically, ‘You haven’t exactly left me with enough to quench my thirst’.  ‘Don’t start’, said Angus.  He was just about to launch into his usual tirade about how selfish she was and how she always had to consider her own needs first, when he suddenly noticed something out to sea.  He stood still and stared straight ahead, his mouth slightly gaping.  ‘What is it?’ said Maureen, sounding confused and somewhat perturbed that he had stopped mid flow as she was secretly looking forward to the ensuing argument.  She turned round following his gaze out to sea.  ‘Oh my God!’ she said.  The storm was clearly visible on the horizon: the dark clouds had formed within what seemed like seconds and the thunder had erupted into great blasts overhead. ‘I think we’d better run for it’, said Angus.  ‘We seem to be far too exposed on this ridge’.  Maureen nodded in agreement.  ‘Look down there in the valley – there is a bridge across to some caves.  We would probably be better off if we got down there.  At least we could get some shelter’.  Come on then’, said Angus, ‘Let’s make a run for it’.

They proceeded to scramble down the rough goat track until they reached the bridge which was a rather rickety affair.  Maureen thought that it wasn’t likely to hold their weight but also thought she had better keep her thoughts to herself.  She’d only be accused of being negative yet again.  Angus ran ahead of her and shouted back, ‘Come on, hurry up, the storm seems to be getting stronger – head for the cave’.  He ran on to the bridge and straight across it.  Just as he reached the other end, the bridge collapsed entirely, leaving Maureen stranded on the opposite side of the ravine.  Angus turned round and watched in utter horror as it shattered into pieces.  The wood was absolutely rotten.  Maureen stood still, biting her lip.  For one moment she considered trying to jump across and then immediately thought the better of it.  You’d need to be an Olympic medallist to cope with that.  Angus shouted to her, ‘Get back behind the trees – find the biggest ones and sit between them with your back against the trunk.  Go on – hurry up’.  He ran off into the cave.

Fortunately, he had been carrying the rucksack containing all the food for their lunch and he now thought that he would set down, dry off and have a little picnic.  He remembered that he had packed four cans of best bitter and felt quite pleased with himself.

Maureen ran back and found a clump of rather over-large trees and sat down.  She did not feel at all happy nor particularly safe from the storm.  ‘He’s the one that’s entirely selfish’, she thought, ‘and I’ve broken three nails scrambling down that hill’.  Just then she heard a rustle in the undergrowth behind her.  She sat up feeling startled and frightened thinking that there would be a snake nearby, and then let out a big sigh of relief as she saw the head waiter from the hotel approaching her.  He was absolutely gorgeous – tall, handsome and with quite exceptional pectoral muscles.  ‘Hello, Romeo, she said.  What on earth are you doing out in a storm like this?’  ‘Well, he replied, ‘I saw you both leaving for your walk and I ran after you because I had heard the appalling weather forecast.  I was hoping to catch up with you both and warn you.  ‘Are you okay?’  ‘Yes, I am now’, she said.  ‘But where is your husband?’  ‘Oh, she replied looking somewhat dejected.  ‘He fell down the ravine as he was trying to cross the bridge.  He died instantly and his body was washed away in the storm waters’.  ‘Oh, dear’, said Romeo.  ‘Well I suppose it’s not such a bad thing really’.  ‘What do you mean?’ said Maureen sounding rather shocked.  ‘Well, I’ve always fancied you – now that he’s out of the picture we should be able to get to know each other properly.  What do you think?’  ‘Okay’, she said and jumped directly into his arms, kissing his neck and chest repeatedly.

I’m afraid the rest of it simply can’t be recorded here.  End of story.”

Now clearly this story is tongue in cheek but there is a purpose to it so I would ask you to bear with me.  I’d like you to work together in this next activity but also to initially work on your own in terms of thinking about the characters within this story.  I’d like you to identify who you think is the nastiest person in this story; the second nastiest; and the third nastiest and in your own minds I would like you to justify this ranking process.  What are your reasons for placing the characters in this order of nastiness?  Now, I’m going to ask you to arrange yourselves into groups of, six to eight and within those groups I’d like you to place yourselves in a circle sitting as for a Circle Time session. Then nominate one person to begin who feels that they’ve already minds completed their personal ranking process.  I’d then like this person to begin by explaining their views to the person next to them – either right or left – it doesn’t matter which way you go round the circle.  The person who is listening will then need to summarise the views of the first speaker prior to giving their own to the person sitting directly next to them in the circle.  So, in effect, what should be happening here is that everyone in the group should have the opportunity to give their views and everyone should be summarising at least one member’s views prior to giving their own.  At the end of this I’m going to ask each of the groups if you can come to some agreement in terms of ordering your characters into first, second and third nastiest. 

Activity 3

Although I recognise that this is fun activity and there is hopefully quite a lot of humour involved in this story, there is a serious purpose here.  That is to highlight the kind of skills that you were using in the activity.  When you think about it and reflect upon it, what I was asking you to do was to withhold gratification to allow other people to speak, to listen appropriately, to maintain appropriate eye contact, not to butt in, not to shout someone down, to be able to cope with feelings of anxiety when someone whom you know very well or whose views you respect happens to differ to you in their opinions about something.  I was asking you to be active listeners, to sensitively consider each other’s feelings and view points, to make use of simple social skills such as taking turns, and appropriate body language when someone else is talking.  Some of those skills are quite basic and some are more sophisticated.  I think what is interesting here is that these are the kinds of skills that we expect children to have developed and that they need in order to access the curriculum presented to them in today’s school contexts.

 I suppose we presume that they’ve learnt these skills at home or we presume that they would have picked them up anyway somehow as if by magic.  And it’s not easy; it’s very, very difficult!  Even within the adult context we find ourselves shouting over each other or talking over each other.  And yet, these are skills that we expect children to have and to demonstrate on a daily basis in the classroom.  We’ll all stand up, we’ll talk, we’ll read a story, we’ll be asking them to participate in certain activities that demand many of these skills and we’ll be come distressed and upset if they don’t display them in a way that we deem to be appropriate.  Yet, I think I’d argue that really we need to be looking at our own skills first and we also need to be reflecting upon the fact that this is not always easy.  It’s not always easy to wait your turn; it’s not always easy to withhold gratification; it’s not always easy to manage difficult and uncomfortable feelings, particularly in a public context. 

It may be helpful if we now thought-storm the following question:  What kinds of skills do we think that we were using there?  I will act as the scribe for your ideas.

If we look at the resulting list I would suggest that the kinds of skills that we were using in this activity are those of emotional literacy.  We can focus on a useful definition by Gillian Shotten (2003 – Page 1) where she suggested that emotional literacy could be defined ‘as the ability to recognise, understand, handle and appropriately express your emotions’ and this includes the following:

• being aware of what you are feeling
• understanding why you might be feeling that way
• knowing the most effective way for expressing your feelings and being able actually carry out this response
• understanding and taking into account the feelings of others and adjusting your responses accordingly.

I think that these four areas of emotional literacy are the key ones on which we need to focus.

Activity 4

Listening to your Feelings

We know that feelings are really important and particularly in the area of relationships.  If we are going to be able to develop, maintain and, if necessary, end relationships then we need very much to be clued into our own feelings and emotions, to really understand them and respond to them in an effective manner.  Richard Nelson Jones in his book, ‘Human Relationship Skills’ identified the reasons why it is particularly important for us to be responsive to the flow of our feelings.  He recorded seven main reasons. 

The first one is that we need to be responsive to this flow of feelings because it can help us to acknowledge any kind of sense of liking or attraction that we have for someone.  Then there is this issue of spontaneity.  If we are in touch with our feelings we are free to be more creative and respond in a fresher way in our relationships.  Then there is sensuality which, on one level, means touch but affectionate use of physical contact can be affirming and may not need to have a sexual goal although it may obviously involve sexuality.  Then there is rationality.  What he argues is that, if you are truly in touch with what you feel about situations, you are less likely to be reacting to the prohibitions and inhibitions you’ve probably unthinkingly learnt from others.  It can cut across much of the self-defeating thinking that makes for rational feelings and behaviour.

Also there is existential awareness, i.e. really being fully in touch with your feelings entails acknowledging the reality of your finitude and this may lead us to feel more urgent about making the most of our relationships.  Then there is the issue of finding meaning.  We are meaning-seeking beings and happiness and fulfilment entails finding meaning in life.  If we don’t have this sense of meaning, then we would only experience feelings of emptiness, apathy and despair.  Finally, there is this notion of identity and according to Richard Nelson Jones; relationships are most satisfactory when both of you have a secure sense of your own identities as separate individuals.  We’re going to do an exercise now which is designed to help us become aware of how we are grounded in what could be called our ‘bodily feelings’. 

First of all I would like everyone to sit in a quiet place, close your eyes for about five minutes and then try to tune into the sensations you are experiencing within your own bodies.  I’d like you to try and focus on what your body is actually feeling rather than on what you are thinking.  You may be thinking this is stupid, this is daft, but please try and put those thoughts aside and actually really think what is my body feeling; what am I actually feeling at this present moment in time?  Secondly, I’d like you to focus on the physical sensations in each of these parts of your body just for about one minute each.  First of all start off with your arms; your head; the trunk of your body; your legs.  Next I would like you to keep your eyes closed and for the next three to five minutes just focus purely on the sensations of your breathing.  I would like you to give me some feedback on those three activities.  How difficult or easy was it to focus on what your body was feeling rather than on what you were thinking and what kinds of physical sensations did you experience when focusing on those different areas of your body?  How did it feel to be focusing purely on the sensations of your breathing?  Finally, I would like you to just quickly write down the bodily sensations attached to you experiencing the following emotions:

• anger
• despair
• happiness
• fear

Hopefully, what we should be able to see from these kinds of exercises is that listening to feelings requires us not just to be aware of bodily sensations but also the capacity to identify and label our feelings accurately.  For example, if Richard asks Emily out for a date and she very nicely and politely, but firmly, declines his offer there are a range of possible feelings that he might experience as a result of this.  He could be hurt, he could be very angry or humiliated.  He could feel very tense or he could be quite relieved or even optimistic.  He has got some choice about the feelings he experiences and it depends, to a large extent, on the way in which he interprets Emily’s refusal.  He could choose to think that it’s absolutely awful – nothing as bad or humiliating as this has ever happened to me before in my life – or he could think well, she’s just thick and stupid and has made the wrong decision.  Or, alternatively, that she’s entitled to take this position and I can’t always be successful so I’ll pop off and try somewhere else.

Clearly, these choices in the interpretation will contribute to the feelings that he would experience, either of being anxious or depressed or feeling angry in the second interpretation or feeling more confident and optimistic in the last one.  Following on from this what I’m going to ask you to consider the importance of, is the need to try and identify and label what you actually feel and in order to do this it is important to have a vocabulary with which to describe feelings.  This is one of the key skills of emotional literacy that I think we all need to have.  As well as teaching our students this vocabulary, we will need to make sure that we have developed it ourselves.  I know that for those who are trained to become counsellors or psychotherapists, some of their training actually involves building a repertoire of feeling words so that they can help their clients to feel really accurately understood.  It is vital that we actually learn to identify and label feelings and that we have as many of these feelings words or words for describing our feelings as we can in our repertoire.  I have consequently provided you with a list of feelings words which we may use in subsequent activities and these are as follows:

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