Welcome back to our second part of a a small series that Jesse and I are going to be working from with MacKillop Education in Geelong. My name's Richo and today we're going to be talking a little bit about emotional intelligence, emotional literacy and what our commitment to as a school as a ReLATE school why we why we're so strong about it really and we kind of put it as a flagship about or something that we do a little bit different to a lot of other schools. So and you might you might have heard about through students throughout community meetings, you'll see it in our safety plans, you might have heard of an LSI or a life space happens. Sso again I’m inviting out resident educational psychologist Jesse Diggins in to have a chat with me today, and so Jesse I'm going to throw out the question - why the importance why the need around this emotional work?
Thanks for the little intro there Richard. Important question, I think to start with and one I’m really keen to unpack. I might start with talking about emotional literacy and what that means and really simply it's just having the vocabulary to be able to name the feelings and the emotions that we're experiencing. When we do the community meeting it's a great opportunity to rehearse that because that second question is that first question is how we’re feeling. I thought maybe to speak to the importance of this I’d speak about this study that was done in 2015 by Pamela Snow and she looked at people that were in in jail young offenders in jail and 57, I think it was 59% of them had this condition called alexithymia and basically this really fancy big word for saying that those students had those offenders had problems finding words for their feelings. So that makes a lot of sense to me and what that finding tells me is that when kids can't find the words and they can't use words they use their behavior to communicate how they're feeling and that behavior gets them in trouble and you know they're on the pipeline to incarceration and we don't want that for our kids- so increasing their emotional vocabulary their ability to name how they're feeling is really important. So there's a couple of sort of sayings that I think really speak to this. One of them comes from Dan Siegel he says: students need to name it to be able to be able to tame - you know and through that rehearsal with the community meeting we're naming it and we're trying to get it accurate. So we don't want to say good you know , we don't say hey yeah good and as a staff we kind of make a mission not to do that and classrooms do that you know, so we're going to try and be more specific and we'll sort of say you know this morning, I’m little bit flat or I’m a little bit distracted or I’m actually positive I’m excited you know you're trying to be specific with our words and you know and model that to our kids because if they can say really accurately how they're feeling they've got a way better chance of solving their problems and us helping them. Another sort of saying that a problem well stated is a problem half solved um and I think that that's true for our kids when they're getting a bit emotional um so you know community meeting helps with that. But aside from community meeting um you know how else do you get students to talk about their problems how they're feeling.
Yeah yeah well exactly I mean we've got our formal ways like the community meeting which happens every morning and when you've explained those examples about trying to really open up a kid to get them speaking about being past okay or fine you know we've got to we do live in a world of reality and this you know you've got to be you've got to be a little bit creative sometimes to get a teenager to make a genuine response of which you kind of feel like you're getting some real talk so because a lot of the time it doesn't happen. So, you've got to be open and flexible with that. So you know certainly changing the environments not to not always have to be under formal talk. Certainly the times we've gone out for a walk or often enough we're looking out in the same gaze rather than at each other that can sort of evoke a little bit more possibility you know even when we're driving in the car sometimes you know it's a really good place where sometimes real talk pops up but when we talk there's a word kind of attunement or being an active listener and this is about where we're sort of like making ourselves genuinely emotionally available to listen and that means through our eyes and our ears and our space between each other and that that change between talking and listening and really really deeply listening to what's going on. And so by attuning and getting sort of on the same vibe as that young person it's more likely that little things will pop up and being okay with the fact that like a non-verbal you know a grunt or your body language is part of that interaction in communication. So being okay for the fact it's not going to work in a straight line and you as an adult can sit with the dance if you like if we're working with teenagers you know and that includes emotions that might be negative or confronting as well yeah.
I like that terminology you know real talk um and I think if you can elicit that from a teenager you know when they feel really hurt or a kid um that that's an important thing you know and when kids come to us you know what they say is like when they've been at other schools or in other experiences they often feel like they're not seen, they're not heard, they're not valued and they feel really misunderstood. So you know we try really hard to know the students sort of authentically we try not to label them and judge them and you know we have a like a motto I suppose at the school which is you know we don't ask what's wrong with you, we ask what's happened to you. So we're not interested in what's wrong with you labels oh yeah okay your ADHD or whatever - we're interested in the story of what's happened to you and when you know When we get that real talk and that story happening we sometimes make connections to things that have happened in the past explaining how kids sort of act out currently, you know and that might be what sort of talked about in the LSI like you mentioned the live space interview. You know kids might say well in the past I always solve problems like this you know and that gives us an opportunity to connect you know how they're feeling with what they do how they behave - so they're connecting emotion and behavior ,again a really critical skill and starts with being able to name the emotion. So it's we might hear when I’m feeling threatened I walk out of the classroom, when I’m feeling angry I start flipping over tables yeah you know and it and so being able to name clearly what it is you're feeling, what you do when you feel like that you know that sounds simple but it's something that a lot of our students a lot of young people have a lot of trouble with. Also, you know i think it's important to say as well that it's actually okay to feel angry at school, kids don't hear that they don't get told that um and what we try to do is teach students what to do when you feel angry and we try our different things and when we find something that works we pop it on the safety plan you know and that's why that's an important tool as well for us.
Awesome Jesse well look as always you're a fountain of knowledge mate and uh lucky to be working with you so, well hopefully we'll do this again really soon. For parents that are watching this if there's anything you'd like Jesse and I to bring up and have a chat about to unpack with you, send us a text or whatever, let us know and we're happy to bring that up. So, Jesse thanks again until next time see you later bye.