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May. 25, 2001 Education for the Heart, As Well as the Mind Milton Chen, Member of CRN Advisory Board

San Rafael, California--SWAT teams and ambulances racing into school parking lots are becoming a distressingly common image of American life. The recent shootings at two California high schools again remind us that critical aspects of our students' development are being ignored. The teenage boys responsible share a pattern of isolation, anger, and emotional numbness. Two years ago, the violent rage of Columbine High School's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold included suicide. More metal detectors, police officers, and attacks on media violence only deal with the symptoms, not the underlying causes of youth alienation. The teenage years are well known for their emotional vulnerability, the stresses of becoming an adult, and the cruelty of peers. Yet we often leave our teens to suffer in silence. We must engage teachers, parents, and other caregivers in teaching students the social and emotional skills that allow them to express and manage their emotions. In the title of his best-selling book, Daniel Goleman called these skills "emotional intelligence." These abilities can be taught and the earlier, the better. In producing documentaries on model school programs for our Web site, our Foundation discovered some inspiring teachers and principals who are helping students exercise their "emotional muscles" every day. These students are learning needed skills for the workplaces of the Digital Age, which require teamwork, communication, and conflict resolution. P.S. 15 in Brooklyn uses the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program developed by the New York Public Schools and Educators for Social Responsibility. We filmed two fifth-grade girls in a role-play simulation of the aftermath of not being invited to a friend's birthday party. The first version escalates the conflict. One girl calls the other a "lousy" friend: "I have you over to my house all the time and you couldn't even invite me to your stupid party?" The other girl snaps, "Why don't you shut up? If I'd invited you, you'd have ruined the whole thing." The second version probes for real feelings and moves toward reconciliation. The first girl says, "I felt hurt and angry when you didn't invite me because I thought we were good friends." The other responds: "I wanted to, but my mother said I could only invite two friends because my cousins were coming. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn't know how. I would like to keep on being friends." These students are learning to speak with "I-messages," describing their own emotions in the face of offensive words and deeds. They are also learning "active listening," paraphrasing and encouraging fellow students to help them clarify their feelings and know they are being understood. In the New Haven Public Schools, first-graders are taught the "stoplight exercise": red for stop and calm down; yellow for think about the problem and its solution; and green for go with a plan of action. A freshman girl told us she remembered it when pushed in the heat of a basketball game with a competing school. The curriculum also includes practicing peer pressure resistance skills, breathing exercises for relaxation, and a ropes course* to instill cooperation and trust. During first period at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey, students talk about their concerns and write in journals about topics such as bullying. Noncompetitive sports allow each student to participate. And teachers incorporate lessons on civility and responsibility into core courses. These programs and others like them provide solid evidence that social and emotional learning is not a frill or another "warm and fuzzy" educational fad. Instead, they demonstrate the hard-nosed connection between emotional learning and student achievement. Emotionally intelligent students perform better on tests and other measures of learning. They are better equipped to concentrate and persist, overcome frustration, and share compassionately with fellow classmates and teachers. A key additional benefit: they are less likely to engage in substance abuse and sexual behavior during the high school years. Common sense - and recent events - tell us that we must educate "the whole child." Schooling must embrace students' hearts, as well as their minds. *Note: ropes course is a group activity in which a team members cooperate and build trust as they help each other climb, swing, and jump using ropes and pulleys. Milton Chen is executive director of The George Lucas Educational Foundation, based in the San Francisco Bay area (www.glef.org).

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