Granting Yourself and Others Permission to Feel

Most educators hope to leave a lasting, positive impression on students. We smile when students come back to visit us or when they share stories of how they were touched by something we said or did years ago that supported them years later. We may think to ourselves: this is what makes the hard work of teaching worthwhile. 

This month, we honor an educator whose legacy lives on in this way and in the work at the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence. We honor Marvin Maurer, who not only gave his nephew, Center Director, Dr. Marc Brackett, permission to feel, but who served as a model of why we celebrate and appreciate teachers. 

This month, we invite you to join us in honoring the legacies of Uncle Marvin Maurer and teachers everywhere. 

• Congratulate the 2022 Marvin Maurer awardees: Bonnie Brown, Rafa Abrega and Maureen Lang. All were acknowledged during this year's RULER Implementation Conference. Tune into the news and events section on our website or on social media this month for their stories. 

• Share a story of how an exemplary educator in your life gave you permission to feel. Invite students in your school to do the same. Post the stories on social media accounts and use #BeAnUncleMarvin. Don’t forget to check the hashtag throughout the month to learn about other educators who are making a difference in the lives of their students.

• Share our new staff development facilitation guide, Permission to Feel with the adults in your school community to. Hear what Uncle Marvin meant to students, brainstorm how envisioning your best self can help you live your why, and learn how to grant yourself and others permission to feel.

Building Emotion Skills Through Literature

We know that literature is a great way to introduce students to concepts and themes. It also can help us learn about emotions through characters. How many times have you read a book, immediately connected with a character, and learned from their experiences? Perhaps something about their situation resonated with you, or maybe you or someone you love shared a lived experience. When we can identify with characters, we tend to learn more from them. In this way, literature can help us understand and label our emotions, develop empathy for others, and evaluate strategies to regulate our own emotions and achieve our goals. 

If we are to help ourselves and our students navigate emotions in ways that best serve us as individuals, we can look for examples of how emotions have impacted the lives of others. Exploring examples of real or fictional character triumphs and tragedies through fiction and non-fiction literature allows us to take on the perspectives of others. Having students role play or rewrite story or scene endings helps them explore cause and effect, illustrating how action or inaction fueled by emotions has consequences. 

Schools with access to RULER Online can use the links below to view some books that can be used to spark Early Childhood and Elementary discussions about feelings:

• Early Childhood Book List.

• Elementary Book List.

Do you have a book that has helped you or your students become better emotion scientists? Please share your recommendation with us so that we can add it to our book lists.  We are looking for books at every level: Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle, and High School.  We are also open to book suggestions for the adults in students’ lives.  Add your recommendation here.  We will publish the updated book lists in a future edition of the newsletter.

Using our Emotions or the Emotions of Others to Understand and Disrupt Bias

How do we respond when we encounter situations or individuals who are unfamiliar or different from us? Do we immediately respond as emotion judges, based on conclusions and preconceived notions? Or, do we respond as emotion scientists who are curious to get to know individuals for who they are? Research shows that we all have biases, or certain attitudes or beliefs about certain groups, and at times, these biases consciously or unconsciously impact our behavior.

Opening our hearts and minds to learning more about the identities, cultures, experiences, and upbringing of those who are different from us allows the unfamiliar to become familiar while sparking curiosity instead of judgment based on stereotypes. Educating ourselves is one strategy that can be used to dismantle barriers that reinforce bias.  RULER schools can visit the Recognizing Bias and Strategies for Shifting Mindsets resources on RULER Online to learn additional strategies that can help us work on overcoming our biases.

Giving Yourself Grace in the New Year with Positive Self-Talk

Words matter. Regardless of how many times we repeat, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” words still have the power to move us closer to achieving our goals or throwing in the towel. As educators, we find ourselves teaching our students the skills they need to help them reframe their thoughts. For example, if a student says “I will never be able to do that” we encourage them to think “I just need a little more time to learn.”
 
Why then can’t we, as educators, be equally mindful when it comes to what we say to ourselves? Practicing the evidence-based thought strategy, positive self-talk, can rewire our brains so we automatically think more optimistically when we need it most. 
 
As we work toward accomplishing our 2022 goals, our inner voice can serve to motivate and inspire us to keep moving forward, even if confronted with unexpected setbacks. Instead of tuning into an inner voice that may discourage us when challenges arise, we can seek ways to encourage our continued efforts with positive self-talk. Research suggests that positive self-talk can help us to solve problems, think more creatively, and better cope with challenges, including reducing the harmful effects of stress and anxiety.

Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, recommends three strategies that can help us flip the switch on the unhelpful voice in our heads.

1. Talk to yourself using your name. “Marc, you got this.”

2. Think about what you would say to a friend or a student in a similar situation.

3. Remember that this is temporary.

Talking to ourselves and giving ourselves the advice that we would give a friend provides psychological distance allowing us to see the situation from a different perspective. Emotions are fleeting.  They come and they go, providing us with valuable information along the way. Enacting our emotion skills helps us use this information to reach our goals.

Additional Positive Self-Talk Resources for Adults

• Dive deeper into the three strategies above in this quick 3-minute interview with Dr. Marc Brackett.

• Preview part of YCEI’s free course on Coursera by watching the “Positive Self-Talk” video. In this video, Dr. Marc Brackett explains positive self-talk and how you can work to improve it in your daily life.

• Print positive quotes to serve as visual reminders to give ourselves the grace that we give so freely to others.