Archive for the Emotional Intelligence Strategies Category

I have always been both fascinated and repelled by snakes, and so when I read this story* several years ago when teaching literature to eighth graders, it was unforgettable. The story is true.

Grace Wiley chose to became a zoologist who specialized in the reptilian world. She was a tiny woman, Barely five feet tall and did not weigh 100 pounds. After an early, disastrous marriage, she had decided snakes were easier to cope with than were husbands. And so snakes had been her main companions for over 40 years.

Kittens that are, between their third week and their third month of life, kept in a room lined only with horizontal stripes will, as adults, have no trouble romping from table to floor, but they will bump into table and chair legs. They behave throughout their lives as if vertical objects do not exist.

White-crowned sparrow chicks must hear their species’ song between their tenth and fiftieth day of life. It is only during this critical period of time that they can tape and store the parental songs in their brain — and so be able to reproduce the song later in life.

I have always been fascinated with the brain. The rest of the human body is ruled by the brain — it commands every sensation, every movement, every thought, every memory, and every dream. Sir Charles Sherrington wrote that within this “enchanted loom millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern, though never an abiding one.”

My interest in this instrument was intensified during my son Caleb’s seventh grade year, when he and another boy decided to do their science project on a comparative study of the brains of various animals vs. the human brain. So they (really, we) began. They went to many butcher shops and collected the brains of rats, sheep, dogs, cats, pigs, and cows.

“We do not stop playing because we are old, we grow old because we stop playing.”
Unknown

Simple, mom, it’s ‘work’ when you tell me to do it, it’s ‘play’ when I want to do it.” Or maybe not so simple? I think of all the times I’ve seen children hard at work, but treating it like play; the same is true for me, and for most adults.

Plato said, “Life must be lived as play.” In ancient Greek, the word for education is “paidiae” and the word for play is “paidia.” Perhaps they saw that at play the mind is at its most energized its most active.

Thirty-two sixth graders, five rows of seven desks each, paper and boxes flying, noise abounding, a look of panic in the teacher’s eyes. The climax of The Three Stooges Go To Grade School? No. My own classroom on the first day of my teaching career, 33 years ago.

After that first day, I did not plan to remain a teacher for long — only until I could find another job. Sitting in the teacher’s lounge after classes ended, my confidence in myself was at its lowest.

Have you ever tried to tell a child to ‘Be nice, darling?’ It doesn’t work does it?

From the dawn of time, parents and teachers have been trying to corral kids into showing concern for their fellows. If I could gather all the energy that has been spent on this over the millennia, I could have traveled the universe and swooped back to earth several times without any problem at all.

Selfish

But it doesn’t work because children are essentially ego-centric. They believe they are the be-all and end-all of the universe. And it is our job as their guides to becoming a grown-up to disabuse them of that notion.

It was third of July – my mother’s birthday. I was three and a half years old and I’d pleaded with my mother to let me stay all night with Grandma.

It was the enticement of playing with all my aunts, uncles and cousins that had encouraged me to ask mom for this opportunity. And what a fun night it was. Grandpa was up six times telling us to be quiet or else. (That was a record.)

Beautiful day

The next day was a typical gorgeous summer day in Idaho. We asked Grandma if we could go across the street to play on the playground equipment of the school.

Recovering from sadness is a psychological journey we all have to take many times over. Sometimes the emotional burden is relatively light, such as when we break a favorite dish or scrape a knee. At other times, it is tremendously heavy, weighing us down like bag full of lead as we attempt to carry on functioning in our day-to-day lives.

When my marriage, which I had thought indestructible, broke down I felt just like heroine in the fairytale “The Princess with the Glass Heart”.  I felt terribly fragile, like the finest piece of Venetian glass just waiting to shatter at the slightest pressure. I needed to spend time repairing the deep crack in my heart in order that I could live healthily and vibrantly again.

“We create caring, nurturing adults, prepared to be productive citizens in a democratic society.”

I’m sure you’ve all seen that proclamation, there or thereabouts, as part of the mission statement of just about every school you’ve ever visited. It’s a common declaration. And meaningless if it isn’t followed.

How do we avoid turning it into a empty bunch of words? Just how do we create caring, nurturing, productive citizens?

People who will change the world in which we live

At Six Seconds, we want to create change makers.

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself. ~Didacus Stella

All of us stand on the shoulders of others – no-one is self-made; no-one is self-sufficient; no one person has brought into being all the things that enrich and improve our lives.

And, at the start of this new, exciting year, I am grateful for many, many shoulders.

1. Those of the dedicated, creative teachers and specialists with whom I work alongside.

2. Those of the gifted and talented students who teach me far more than I teach them.