Teaching Empathy Institute's February Newsletter

Social and emotional skills:
A pathway to success; a gift for a lifetime

For two years, from 2014 to 2015, I commuted each morning to my job as a program designer and coach for Turnaround for Children in NYC.

Each morning, I got on the 5:40 bus out of New Paltz, for a trip that on good days, took an hour and a half. Over time, I developed a sequence of routines to pass the time. For the first 20 minutes, I played Words With Friends with my three favorite opponents: my wife, my father and my mother-in-law. Then, I would settle in for 40 minutes of listening to music on my IPhone. I spent the rest of the time napping, if I could fall asleep.

One morning, when I couldn’t fall asleep, I read over the texts I had received the day before. Suddenly, I had an idea. I started writing a note of thanks or appreciation to each person who had texted me. I thanked the guy I coached little league with for being so supportive of my son. I expressed gratitude to a co-worker who edited a document for me. I thanked my son for helping me clean the gutters over the weekend, and so on. Within 10 minutes I had texted about 10 people. It was fun, and soon, people started responding with a note of thanks back.

This practice became a regular part of my morning routine. I called it Gratitude Texting. When I shared this idea with my son Sam (an avid texter), he thought it was cool and started doing it on his own. It opened us up to the conversation about how important little moments of thoughtfulness can create big feelings of connection.

It’s with this thought in mind that we bring you this edition of Teaching Empathy Institute’s newsletter and podcast topic Social and emotional learning: A different standard. Social and emotional learning is not a complicated process but rather a simple intention of self-care and human connection.

Read more about social and emotional learning on our Artistry of Empathy blog. This months featured post: Social and emotional skills: A pathway to success; a gift for a lifetime

"When social and emotional learning is infused into classroom practice, daily academic and social stressors are managed effectively because people are conscious of their thoughts, actions and words about, and toward others, are given opportunities to help others, and build bonds of acceptance, instead of barriers of rejection."

-David Levine

Little Talks that Make a Big Difference
The TEI Podcast series

Little Talks focus on meeting the social and emotional needs of students, moving them toward healthy social decision-making and pro-social skills development. Subscribe to this newsletter to be notified of upcoming Little Talks releases.

This Month's Podcast Topic:
Social and emotional learning: a different standard

Social and emotional learning is defined as the process through which children acquire and effectively apply the knowledge and skills to manage their emotions while building healthy relationships with others. In this episode of the Little Talks series, we focus upon practical approaches for infusing SEL into the classroom setting.

Listen to our latest Little Talk, Social and emotional learning: a different standard , on our blog and subscribe to this newsletter to be notified of upcoming Little Talks releases.

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Blueprints for Caring
Hands-on Strategies for Educators

Try This: Feeling Words

Creating an on-going feeling word vocabulary can also be seen as improving one’s emotional literacy. Emotional literacy is reflective of someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence. A person with high EQ is able to manage his or her emotions during stressful times.

Learn ways to use feeling words to expand your students emotional literacy in this month's Blueprints for Caring post on our blog.

Visit our blog for ways to try this in your classroom