It’s true. We are quick to respond with physical first aid. We are learning to offer and accept mental first aid but we keep running into an emotional block with emotions. We can find them embarrassing, unacceptable, intolerable. We forget we are human and others are human so our first reaction is often to deny the emotions or tell ourselves off and put ourselves down. This video straightens the picture and gives insight into how we can help ourselves and others more appropriately and effectively.
I am not going to replicate what is in the article I am giving you a link to. You are quite capable of reading it for yourself. What is interesting is Christopher Pappas has linked emotional intelligence to e-learning and what we can do as teachers to acknowledge and build in the personal and social capabilities as we work with technology in our classrooms. ACARA supplies indicators and elements for us so it is a matter of ensuring we are addressing those as we implement tasks and content via technology.
Maysoon Zayid. What a powerful performance. Watch this talk. She is someone who can cover the all the indicators of the personal and social capability in one talk. Her leadership in this area is extraordinary.
This video has had over 4 million views on You Tube. The construction of the video, so that it has an impact, is worth paying attention to. This man is a teacher. He knows how to take a piece of information and plant it right into another human being so that it grows. He has very good social management skills which is why the video has had so many views. The message addresses the criteria/ indicators for self-awareness but by the end of the video he is addressing the criteria for self- management. We have to take a positive view of ourselves and push through on it so we become confident, resilient and adaptable.
A beautiful video with a powerful message. It tackles a big issue in society in a way we can all deal with. We can then get out the statistics if we want to and have a closer look and debate the areas of concern in a safe way. There are all sorts of things which could be discussed as a result of seeing this video or you could just show it and let it work its magic. It fits into the self-management and social awareness elements of the Personal and Social Capability.
This video has had over 4 million views and it is doing the rounds on Facebook as well. If you read the comments under the video then you may well be as surprised as I was at the level of swearing and disparaging comment. If you filter that out you can see there is a bit of a discussion as to whether a boy like MattyB should promote himself in such an obvious way because he has a sister with Down’s Syndrome. That adds a whole new level of discussion to the video which has been made in order to address what are the social capabilities in our Australian National Curriculum. It uses real people. It creates a scenario which highlights some important issues when it comes to accepting others, how to deal with that and how to improve relationships with all people . For Matty to make the video it is about developing his leadership skills and helping him to use the tools and networks he has to resolve conflict and develop leadership skills. So, there are so many discussions to be had around this video which relate to the social capabilities. Were I to show it in class I’d be doing a cut and paste on the comments so I could block out the undesirable material for class. With older students I’d look at why that would occur with a video like this and that is also relevant to the social capabilities.
For Social Awareness students at all the levels have to be able to :
appreciate diverse perspectives
contribute to civil society
understand relationships.
For Social Management students have to look at being able to:
When managing your own and the behaviour of others it can be very hard to pinpoint what constitutes emotional abuse. Trying to have rational, logical discussions can be difficult because people are not really clear about emotional abuse. When we look at self management , students need to be able to:
express emotions appropriately develop self-discipline and set goals work independently and show initiative become confident, resilient and adaptable
For social management they have to be able to:
communicate effectively work collaboratively make decisions negotiate and resolve conflict develop leadership skills
The personal and social capabilities are about emotional intelligence and so students need to have a clear idea of what constitutes emotional abuse. Reach Out has explained it all very clearly so there can be sensible and reasonable discussions about such behaviours and then strategies for managing them.
This video is getting towards the 2 million in 4 years views on You Tube so it holds meaning for people. The Personal and Social Capability is about enabling or blocking yourself and enabling or blocking others. Could you do any of the things shown in this video? Would you want to? Would you want to encourage others to do any of the things in this video? Would you want to be the one who stops them? I don’t want to jump into the Grand Canyon or anything like it. I would not encourage anyone else to do it. This video has made me think about where my boundaries are and where they are for me as a teacher. There is no doubt when you watch the video that these people are truly amazing in what they can do and what they have achieved. It really is about how high we can fly as human beings. I was thinking about the risk assessment for some of the things. What would it be and how would you put it in place? This is why we need the Personal and Social Capability. We do need to enable ourselves and others. We shouldn’t block ourselves and certainly not others…but where would you put the boundaries?
Experience is a great teacher and so this clip would be a good way to get students to engage with older people to get he benefit of their hindsight and life experience. It would also be a good way for them to engage with technology and work out how to present a message which would mean something to others. According to the ACARA indicators, for self-awareness students need to be able to :
recognise emotions
recognise personal qualities and achievements
understand themselves as learners
develop reflective practice
The video is a a good way of reflecting on what they learn and find out. Year 10s could make a presentation which would be suited to Year 8s. Year 8s could look at what different age groups would say to them at their age. There would then be a mulling over process and then a capacity to look at themselves as learners and as emotional beings. This clip encourages emotional intelligence in a very practical and appealing way.
This video is about Britain’s approach to assisting self-management with health care but if you put it into an education context then it has some good suggestions and recommendations which we could use in schools. If you provide students with good quality information so they can see a range of options in terms of their behaviour and choices and then increase their capacity to set good goals for themselves our job as teachers becomes that of mentor. We can help students to become realistic about moving forward. We can help show them what is blocking them from getting to where they want to be. We can provide some good digital resources so they can explore ideas and options for themselves. One good point the video makes is not to push people into change. It is a case of providing them with positive ideas and plentiful good quality resources which will bring bout light bulb moments. The video looks at how useful technology can be in doing this. There are so many sites, apps, safe online resources which can help students find out things for themselves in the safe context of school with an adult who can help set a non judgemental perspective. By doing it this way we would be assisting students to become confident, show initiative and independence.
personal and social capability 