Real World Self-Science

My friend Jeni, who I have known since I was three years old, has the hardest job I can imagine. She teaches special education middle schoolers in inner-city Oakland, California. Not only are her students 12 and 13 years old, a notoriously difficult age, but they are also struggling with learning disabilities while facing chaotic family lives and struggling to survive tough neighborhoods. For the past year I have watched in awe as Jeni has persevered (and often succeeded) to connect with her students and bridge their disabilities to bring them up to their grade level in math.

Growing up together, Jeni and I both participated in the Self-Science program at our elementary school. When I joined the Six Seconds’ team they had just launched their most recent nation-wide Self-Science study. Jeni and I realized we could bring Self-Science to her classroom. Six Seconds has been successfully introducing EQ to a variety of schools thoughout the country, Jeni and I wanted to study what would happen when Self-Science was introduced to a high risk, special education, inner-city classroom and participate in this ground-breaking research.

As Jeni explains it, “I jumped at the opportunity to participate in a Self-Science study and bring my students this unique curriculum that had been formative in my own emotional development and problem-solving ability.” Likewise, I jumped at the opportunity to gain some hands-on experience teaching the Self-Science curriculum which helped me navigate my own middle school years.

Learning-disabled students have an increased need for EQ training. Many LD students have difficulty interpreting the social cues necessary for interpersonal skills, limited conceptualization of the consequences of their actions (consequential thinking), and poor impulse control. In Jeni’s classroom, the students also experience frustration due to repeated failure in school and feelings of inadequacy, often leading to depression.

In our six months of teaching Self-Science, we watched as the students’ emotional vocabulary grew and their ability to monitor and control their impulsive and negative responses increased. It was like watching time lapse photography: bit by bit motivation, optimism and compassion levels began to shift.

Self-Science opened the door for an important lesson for one of our highest energy and most self-destructive students, David. We noticed that the students had a hard time both giving and receiving criticsm, so we designed a lesson to demonstrate different forms of criticism, including self-criticism.

A few days after this lesson, Jeni asked her students to do self-evaluations. David gave himself Fs in every category. Jeni used this as an opportunity to reinforce the Self-Science lesson a few days earlier. Jeni showed David that he was giving himself discouraging and destructive critisism. She convinced him that a more optimistic -- and accurate -- self-evaluation would be more useful. She said that accurately identifying both his strengths and weaknesses would allow him to work on his weaknesses without getting overwhelmed. As Jeni explains, “For the first time in my two years of working with David, he understood the adverse consequences of his negative self-talk. He filled out the evaluation again, giving himself the more accurate grades of As Bs and Cs. Both he and I noticed that his mood clearly changed after he gave himself the more positive evaluation.” The next week in Self-Science, David shared his experience with the class, showing us his revised self-evaluation and explaining how he changed his attitude towards himself and his work.

Self-Science created many teachable moments for Jeni and her students. Along with developing an EQ vocabulary within each student, the class also developed a common language with which to address the subtleties of social interaction. Where before Self-Science students where likely to insult each other when frustrated, they are now able give constructive criticism. When the students revert to self-defeating and negative behavior, they can be reminded to be self-reflective and consider alternative actions. A positive statement tally hangs in the classroom to remind students to encourage and appreciate each other. Jeni reports that in her classes where we provided EQ education, student productivity is up and conflicts are down.

As we approach the new school year, Jeni and I have the same question: will the gains Jeni’s students made over last school year survive summer and stay with them as they tackle the next school year? Hopefully, come September, the students will have retained enough of the Self-Science lessons and vocabulary to quicken the transition into the new school year and allow them to further develop their EQ skills. In any case, this year showed us that giving time to emotional intelligence increased academic learning and created a more positive environment for the students and the teachers. The key success is knowing that, while their lives are challenging, we turned the classroom into a place of shelter and hope.