An interesting part of growth is the development of the ability to understand the feelings of others. This learning process begins in kindergarten, where children learn to share toys and crayons.
As children get older, they learn to relate with others from different backgrounds and use the playground with others without hurting feelings. Considering the well-being and emotions of others gives individuals an advantage when they work in teams and groups.
Proper management of student's emotions helps to make the students more productive and better people in society. As a result, schools need to look for ways to promote emotional intelligence among students.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability for individuals to have an awareness of their feelings as well as the ability to manage such feelings effectively. Even more, emotional intelligence involves the use of your emotions to plan and achieve your desired goals.
- Teach Students to Understand Different Types of Emotions
It is important to teach students the various types of emotions such as anger, boredom, nervousness, enthusiasm, impatience, and frustration. Children need to know what these emotions mean, manage them, and read them in others.
When children see their parents and teachers handle challenging situations, it makes them learn how to handle and cope with their emotions. Besides, they also learn from their peers while in the classroom and playground, both consciously and unconsciously.
- Students Should be Taught Empathy.
Schools should encourage students to see life from the viewpoint of others. Teachers can ask students to write essays on how they feel if they moved to a new country that speaks a different language from theirs. Such essays will help the students to develop empathy for those going through difficult situations.
- Encourage Students to Give Back to Society and Volunteer.
Schools should be taught to always think of others as it gives them a sense of importance and makes them feel that what they are doing is important. When students get involved in charity and community service, it helps them develop great internal values, making them able to manage their emotions better.
- Allow Students to Make Mistakes.
Students need to learn that all their actions have consequences. However, they should be encouraged to make mistakes as they learn from such experiences.
- Schools Should Teach Students Resilience.
Students should be exposed to experience conflict and resilience as it helps to teach them that they will not always get what they want, and they must be ready to handle such situations. Additionally, they must learn that life won't go their way, hence the need to develop the ability to see the bigger picture irrespective of their current situation.
- Teach Students How to Manage Frustration
We are always faced with frustrating situations either at home or in schools. As a result, schools should teach students that although they have either family or friends to help them overcome frustrating situations, there might also be times when there will be no help.
Hence, they must look for ways to solve the problem themselves. Schools must learn to include experiments on how to handle and manage frustration in the student's activities.
Conclusion
Overall, the importance of being able to manage your emotions can never be over-emphasized. Even more, it is important to start learning this act at a very young age. If students can combine both IQ and EQ, it makes them understand more and develop into strong individuals.
Schools must nurture students' emotional intelligence as it will help them stand out both in school and life in general.
