If you’ve been following along with the blog and my YouTube channel for the past several weeks, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about social-emotional learning and its many components. Last week on the blog, I wrote an overview of the CASEL framework, and today I want to dig deeper into the section of self-awareness.
Self-awareness is the first competency within the social-emotional learning framework, and it is also a critical component of building emotional intelligence. According to the Institute for Health and Human Potential, emotional intelligence is “the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions” and “recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.”
Having high emotional intelligence (EQ) is very important for a variety of reasons. According to one survey, 71% of employers reported valuing EQ over IQ. Additionally, there are both short-term and long-term benefits to having a high EQ, including better grades, being less likely to drop out of school and contributing more to your community over time.
So what is self-awareness exactly and how do we go about building it in kids? Self-awareness is all about knowing how you feel, understanding how your emotions impact the people around you, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and having humility. You can review even more characteristics of self-awareness by reading last week’s blog post here.
Self-awareness is truly the foundation for social-emotional learning and building emotional intelligence. Let’s look at 5 strategies that we can use to help foster self-awareness in kids.
- Make feeling the feelings the norm.
- Teach emotional vocabulary.
- Celebrate strengths.
- Help kids set and track goals.
- Teach strategies for responding to compliments, feedback and criticism.
Make Feelings the Norm.
We have to start normalizing the discussion of feelings in our society. Feelings are meant to be felt! That’s why we have them. Start by modeling and discussing your feelings (i.e. I am feeling frustrated right now because many students are talking over me.). Once that feels more familiar, encourage kids to discuss their feelings (i.e. How did that make you feel? How are you feeling right now?). Expect that this will take some time.
As you encourage a more open dialogue around feelings, be sure to not minimize kids’ feelings. Help them to understand the purpose of their feelings and how we can respond to them appropriately.
Teach Emotional Vocabulary.
In order for the first strategy to be really effective, it’s critical that you provide kids with the appropriate vocabulary words to use to express themselves. Often, kids use the same words (good, fine, bad) repeatedly to describe their feelings and these words are just not incredibly descriptive or helpful. Help them branch out by exposing them to a wide variety of feelings words like the ones found on this list. Post them around the house or classroom. Use posters with emoticons to help them “read” facial expressions. Practice describing the feelings of other people or characters in books and the clues we use to help us know how they are feeling. Model the vocabulary words when you discuss your own feelings.
Celebrate strengths.
Help kids understand their many strengths and celebrate them. An important component of self-awareness is knowing what we are good at and how we can use our strengths to help others. Have kids create a list of their strengths, compare and contrast them with others and brainstorm ways to use their skills at home or in the classroom. Another important piece of this is teaching the concept of growth mindset, the idea that we all have things we are not so great at…YET. That’s why it’s important to help kids see how they can use their strengths to help others learn and grow.
Help Kids set and track goals.
Goal setting is critical to building self-awareness because it helps kids identify something they really want to accomplish and make a plan for doing it. Whether the goal is learning a new skill, honing a skill they already have or something else entirely, they are taking a good look at themselves when deciding what goal is important to them. Encourage them to break the goal down into smaller steps and set a timeline for achieving the goal. Then, be sure to celebrate the small wins they have as they work toward reaching the larger goal. Celebrating small wins reinforces that progress is being made, builds self-confidence and reminds them that they are one step closer to their end goal.
Teach strategies for responding to compliments, feedback and criticism.
Having humility is an important piece of building self-awareness. This is especially important when receiving compliments, feedback or criticism. Begin by helping kids to understand why compliments, feedback and criticism are necessary and how they help us grow as individuals. Brainstorm different responses with kids so they know how to respond when faced with different scenarios. Reinforce the concepts using the 2 stars and a wish peer feedback strategy. For example, when sharing their writing with the class, choose three peers to provide feedback – two provide stars, or compliments, and one provides a wish, or constructive feedback. Model how they might provide and respond to each classmate’s feedback.
Feel free to share other thoughts, ideas and strategies for building self-awareness in the comments!
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