What is Emotional Intelligence? | Emotional Intelligence for Educators

The Definition

More than knowing yourself

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, understand and manage your own emotions, and to recognise, understand and influence the emotions of other people.

It matters in every job. It matters more in yours. A teacher's emotional state sets the temperature of the whole room, and children read that temperature long before they read anything on the board. A calm teacher makes a calm class possible. A teacher running on frustration will find that frustration reflected back, amplified, by twenty five other people.

Emotional intelligence is not about suppressing what you feel or pretending the hard days are fine. It is about noticing what you feel early enough to choose what you do next.

Why It Matters in a School

Three reasons this is not just a nice idea

Students borrow your calm before they can produce their own. The adult in the room goes first, every time, because the child cannot.

Working out what a behaviour is really about takes clear thinking. That is not available to you while your heart rate is up and your jaw is tight.

Teachers rarely burn out from the hours. They burn out from carrying every hard moment home and having thin relationships to draw on when it gets heavy.

Sort It Out

Low EQ or high EQ?

Eight things you might see in a school. Decide which one you are looking at.

Apply It

In the moment

Take It Away

Think of a class where the temperature is usually good. What are you doing in that room that you might not be doing elsewhere?

What is one recent event where you could have benefited from better emotional intelligence skills?

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