Linda-Lantieri

(Edi­tor’s note: Daniel Gole­man is now con­duct­ing a great series of audio inter­views includ­ing one with Richard David­son on Train­ing the Brain: Cul­ti­vat­ing Emo­tion­al Skills. We are hon­ored to bring you this guest post by Daniel Gole­man, thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

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Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intelligence

By Daniel Goleman

The scene: a first-grade class­room in a Man­hat­tan school. Not just any class­room this one has lots of Spe­cial Ed stu­dents, who are very hyper­ac­tive. So the room is a whirlpool of fren­zied activ­i­ty. The teacher tells the kids that they’re going to lis­ten to a CD. The kids qui­et down a bit.

Then they get pret­ty still as the CD starts, and a man’s voice asks the kids to lie down on their backs, arms at their sides, and get a “breath­ing bud­dy,” like a stuffed ani­mal, who will sit on their stom­achs and help them be aware of their breath­ing. The voice takes the chil­dren through a series of breath­ing and body aware­ness exer­cis­es, and the kids man­age to calm down and stay focused through the entire six min­utes, which ends with them wig­gling their toes.

“You’ve just learned how to make your body feel calm and relaxed,” says the voice. “And you can do this again any time you want.”

The voice on the CD is mine, though I’m read­ing the words of Lin­da Lantieri, who has pio­neered pub­lic school pro­grams in social and emo­tion­al learn­ing that have been adopt­ed worldwide.

Her newest pro­gram adds an impor­tant tool to the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence kit: mind­ful­ness, a moment-by-moment aware­ness of one’s inter­nal state and exter­nal envi­ron­ment. In a new book, Build­ing Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence, which comes with the CD, Lantieri uses mind­ful­ness train­ing to enhance con­cen­tra­tion and atten­tion among kids, and to help them learn to bet­ter calm them­selves. Build­ing Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence comes with instruc­tions that explain how teach­ers and par­ents can adapt Latier­i’s exer­cis­es to kids at dif­fer­ent age lev­els (five to sev­en, eight to 11, or 12 and up) and pro­vides detailed expla­na­tions of each exercise.

Lantier­i’s project exem­pli­fies the ways we can build on sci­en­tif­ic insights to help chil­dren mas­ter the skills of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. As Richard David­son, founder of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry for Affec­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, explained to me in [Read more…] about Resources to help stu­dents build emo­tion­al intelligence