Junyi Centre for Teaching & Learning:
Social and emotional learning in elementary students
Through a 2014 study conducted by CommonWealth Parenting magazine (親子天下) on the emotional health of students in Taiwan, results disclosed an absence of emotional management skills in its youths today. Due to the 21st century’s fast changing environments and its growing number of working parents and single-parent households, the importance of nurturing a child’s social-emotional intelligence is often under-prioritized. With a child’s emotional intelligence valued as a key pillar of development at The Alliance Cultural Foundation’s (ACF) teacher’s learning centre for remote education reform – Junyi Centre for Teaching and Learning (JCTL), ACF partners with Happiness Village organization, offering a series of workshops to teach educators the skill to lead students to better manage negative emotions.
Emotional health not only affects an individual’s confidence, motivation to learn, social relations, but also an individual’s perseverance to tackle and overcome challenges, failures. Study shows, parents who identify children struggling with emotional health, oftentimes resolve in two methods – either by spoiling the child through material goods, or by ignoring the problem altogether increasing a child’s lowered esteem, self-evaluation and anger.
Yang, Li Rong, founder of Happiness Village and licensed psychologist, develops a 24-course certifiable program which trains educators (parents, teachers) to use valuable methods which will help guide youths into better managing emotional health. With the help of parents, Yang identifies needs and develops a curricula based on theories of psychology for elementary school students in effort to develop stronger social-emotional skills from young.
Yang, Li Rong, founder of Happiness Village and licensed psychologist, develops a 24-course certifiable program which trains educators (parents, teachers) to use valuable methods which will help guide youths into better managing emotional health. With the help of parents, Yang identifies needs and develops a curricula based on theories of psychology for elementary school students in effort to develop stronger social-emotional skills from young.
Through the workshop, teachers learn the essence of first understanding the student background to then understanding individual perspectives and reasoning behind individual emotional reactions. The curricula also emphasizes on practical methods which allow teachers and peers to understand emotional differences – role playing, leading class into discussions, comic strips to name a few. Yang’s curricula values to first reach an understanding of one’s own emotions, before understanding the theory behind, to then attain the skills to guide youths into positive emotional management.
Yang’s emotional management curricula is presently active in 13 Taiwan counties, developing 245,000 children, with an estimate of 1,000 certified volunteers. The program not only builds on social-emotional skills of youths, but is also an opportunity for teachers to have a deeper understanding of the student and learn to better guide them, and use age-appropriate methods to encourage their students.
The pace of the 21st century has fractured its youth’s emotional health. ACF hopes that by giving teachers the skill and awareness of the problem will help alleviate the ever growing problem in Taitung and Hualien’s most remote, and for children to have a positive growth and emotional health and experience growing up.
Yang’s emotional management curricula is presently active in 13 Taiwan counties, developing 245,000 children, with an estimate of 1,000 certified volunteers. The program not only builds on social-emotional skills of youths, but is also an opportunity for teachers to have a deeper understanding of the student and learn to better guide them, and use age-appropriate methods to encourage their students.
The pace of the 21st century has fractured its youth’s emotional health. ACF hopes that by giving teachers the skill and awareness of the problem will help alleviate the ever growing problem in Taitung and Hualien’s most remote, and for children to have a positive growth and emotional health and experience growing up.
