Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Schools
Emotional intelligence is important in many fields like education, business, health and even sports, because it has been found that it enhances performance. How can emotional intelligence be harnessed to enhance teaching practices?
Self-awareness
Self-awareness indicates awareness of the circumstance around you and ability to think beyond that. An ability to think beyond that can mean an ability to think outside the box. Emotional intelligence in schools brings self-awareness and it’s important for enhancing performance. When a teacher is self-aware, he can be more aware of his students. This awareness about students can be built through self-analysis of performance by knowing strengths and limitations. It’s advisable to understand the practices and routines that make you more aware of your emotions during teaching and dealing with students.
Self-regulation
If you want to become a successful teacher, self-regulation is very important. It’s the ability to control yourself under pressurizing circumstances. Such circumstances typically arise during behavioral scenarios in the classroom. Well-developed self-regulation through emotional intelligence facilitates a balance between mind and body. To develop self-regulation, understand your positive and negative emotions when you are teaching. Compare the two emotions and pay attention to how you feel. Every time when you feel negative, try to recollect the positive emotions and it will help re-energise your mindset.
Motivation
Motivation is considered to be a main quality of a good teacher. Motivation is a genuine wish to achieve goals that are set out. Maintaining motivation for yourself and your students is helpful. Introducing action plans for students is therefore useful. These plans should be introduced as particular short-term targets across the academic year.
Empathy
Teachers having high emotional intelligence understand themselves and their students well. For this, developing empathy is very important. That way you can understand the needs of your students and to make them feel that they are important parts of the setup. Try to understand what makes each of your students the way they are. Do this through appraisal and by understanding individual needs.
Relationship Management
Another important ability that emotional intelligence brings about is relationship management. You can introduce this by running various group bonding activities. A teacher can support her team and nurture effective group dynamics via relationship management. Find out opportunities to promote harmony among pupils during the academic year.
All in all, emotional intelligence is such a useful concept and its benefits have been proved in other domains. Now it’s time for teachers to use it and become outstandingly efficient in their teaching abilities.