Catholic Education Tasmania -North: EQ in our Children

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When emotions run high, people do and say things they normally would not. When you’re a young child, this is what you do all the time. Sadly it is what all adults do some of the time and more than we should.

Emotional intelligence encompasses awareness, understanding, and the ability to express and manage one’s emotions.

Research suggests emotional intelligence is twice as strong a predictor as IQ of later success. The study demonstrated that self-control predicted success better than IQ, socioeconomic status, and family environment. Those children high in self-control were also healthier, made more money, and were less likely to have criminal records or trouble with alcohol.

The first piece of emotional intelligence is awareness and understanding of emotions. We have to understand and accept before we can control and express our emotions. Emotions are not an inconvenience, but rather a piece of human evolution that serves a purpose.

Our emotions are to be respected and reflected upon not suppressed. Sadness is an emotion uniquely capable of slowing us down, both in thought and motor activity. This can allow us the opportunity to reflect on the source of our emotional upset and take a closer look at the antecedents of it.

In contrast, anger speeds us up, mobilising intense energy and sending blood to our extremities. While evolutionary, this geared us up for a fight; in modern times, it allows the sustained energy for a fight of a different nature. Anger cues us that our rights have been violated and helps us mobilise to protect against future threats.

We need these experiences develop self-control and emotional intelligence. Dr. John Gottman observed how parents respond to their children’s emotions in an effort to understand how emotional intelligence develops. Dr. Gottman’s research shows children of parents who emotion coach are physically healthier, do better in school, and get along better with friends.

In our schools how do we as the 'adults' go with self-control of our emotions?

How do we emotion coach our own and other's responses? How much time do we actually spend reflecting on our behaviours, how they are seen, the motivation and intent behind the behaviours?

In my experience as staff in schools, this is one area where we ask students to reflect on and enhance their EQ while putting a little time, energy and resources into doing the same for ourselves.

Last week around half of our Principals across the North and North West participated in a Life Style Inventory (LSI) self-survey. This week remaining Principals will participate in a self-survey and ask for feedback from 8 other colleagues within their school.

This will give feedback on how we see our own behaviours and how other's see our behaviours (while not knowing the exact thinking behind the behaviours).

This is leadership in the pure sense. Being willing to know more about who you are and how this influences and impacts behaviours that influence and impact on others.

Leadership should be first and foremost about Who you are? Then Why do you lead? Then lastly How we lead and What we lead? Often we have had the order back to front.

I am really looking forward to this next period in our system where we as leaders and as teachers focus on the questions of WHO and WHY much more than WHAT.

The importance, resilience and richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages will be the focus of national celebrations marking NAIDOC Week 2017.

The 2017 theme - Our Languages Matter - aims to emphasise and celebrate the unique and essential role that Indigenous languages play in cultural identity, linking people to their land and water and in the transmission of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, spirituality and rites, through story and song.

Some 250 distinct Indigenous language groups covered the continent at first (significant) European contact in the late eighteenth century. Most of these languages would have had several dialects, so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds.

Around our Region:

Come, Holy Spirit
Replace the tension within us with a holy relaxation.
Replace the turbulence within us with a sacred calm.
Replace the anxiety within us with a quiet confidence.
Replace the fear within us with a strong faith.
Replace the bitterness within us with the sweetness of grace.
Replace the darkness within us with a gentle light.
Replace the coldness within us with a loving warmth.
Replace the night within us with your light.
Replace the winter within us with your spring.
Straighten our crookedness.
Fill our emptiness.
Dull the edge of our pride.
Sharpen the edge of our humility.
Light the fires of our love.
Quench the flames of our lust.
Let us see ourselves as you see us
That we may see You.

Amen.

Emerging Chefs by all accounts at the Principal's Retreat recently