Archives for September 2019

Let’s start with this:

Step One: On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your job, with 10 being “I Love What I Do and Can’t Believe I Actually Get Paid to Do It” and 1 being “I Hate What I Do and Would Change Jobs Immediately If I Had ANY Other Opportunities.”

Step Two: Write the two most stressful things about your job. In other words, if you could only change two things to move you a few points up on the one-to-ten scale, what would those two things be?

Keep those two things in mind as I talk about stress. Stress is energy your body produces when you wonder whether you can deal effectively with a given situation. Ultimately, you will use that energy to either run from the source of your stress or attack it (think back to Psychology 101: fight or flight). I use the terms “engage” for fight and “disengage” for flight. Neither option is necessarily right or wrong—it just depends on how we are engaging or disengaging.

We can engage in ways that are helpful or not helpful. Here are some examples of ways to engage that are helpful: 1) connect with someone who has been through this before to find support and direction; 2) assert yourself appropriately; 3) anticipate problems and have a response plan ready. Here are some examples of ways to engage that are not helpful: 1) verbally attack others; 2) criticize others; 3) create divisions among staff.

We can also disengage in ways that are helpful or not helpful. Here are some examples of ways to disengage that are helpful: 1) reflect, and ask yourself what you are doing to contribute to or sustain the problem; 2) keep perspective (i.e., Is too much of your identity tied to your vocation? Is your sense of urgency in the classroom actually impeding rather than helping you?)

Okay, so back to the two things you listed that you would like to change about your job. How have you managed the stress that those two things produce? Have you engaged in ways that are helpful or not helpful? Have you disengaged in ways that are helpful or not helpful?

First, we are wise to accept that we are very unlikely to achieve balance as a condition—that auto-pilot state in which we’ve finally calculated the magical fixed quantities oftime and energy to dedicate to either our personal or professional lives. Since we live in a world of perpetual change—both professionally and personally—trying to lock in on a set amount of time and energy to devote to any given task (either at home or at school) will leave us feeling even more stressed when inevitable change causes the set amounts to no longer work (a new role at work, a new child at home, etc.).

Instead, we are better served to understand balance as an ongoing process ofinvestingthe finite resources of our time and energy according to a task’s potential long-term benefit.I call it the time test: tomorrow, how much will it matter that I devoted X amount of time and energy to task A, B, or C at home and/or at work? How much will it matter next week? Next six-weeks? Next semester? Next year? My time test is an implementation of Dwight Eisenhower’s point that central to the process of maintaining balance is the skill of distinguishing the urgent from the important (a concept later expanded by Steven Covey).

Not every squeaky wheel that seems to demand the immediate oil of our resources—the urgent—necessarily contributes to our long-term mission and values—the important.The million-dollar task for the classroom teacher, then, is to be a disciplined student of his or her professional and personal lives. The goal is to develop a second-nature ability to accurately interpret the squeaks of our physical, emotional, occupational, financial, and occupational well-beingso we can devote resources wisely and avoid imbalance and eventual burnout.

In my last blog, I explored a real-life case study in emotional intelligence. Jason Seaman, a middle school science teacher, exercised a text-book-worthy display of emotional intelligence skills when he jumped into action to protect his students’ lives. In the lesson from Mr. Seaman, we learn that effective self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, interpersonal skills and good decision-making can safe lives.

It is important for us to remember, though, that the emotional intelligence skillset is not centrally about preparing ourselves to deal with active school shooters. That kind of preparation, sadly, is more urgent now than it has ever been, but emotional intelligences so much more to offer us. Emotional intelligence is essential to our capacity to live adaptively in our daily lives—days that don’t involve hostage situations or active shooters. The classroom teacher dealing with postpartum depression as she returns to work from maternity leave? Exercise in emotional intelligence. The angry parent who uses social media to air his misinformed conclusions of you? Exercise in emotional intelligence. Your passive-aggressive neighbor who still leaves his garbage cans on your driveway even after you’ve politely asked twice that he not do so? Exercise in emotional intelligence. Your spouse, who twenty-three years later still doesn’t know the correct direction to mount the toilet paper roll? Exercise in emotional intelligence.

The list could go on, even down to each moment-to-moment interaction we have with any other human being who, in whatever way and for whatever reason, evokes within us a potentially conflict-producing emotion. In every case, the successful return to mental wellbeing is dependent on our ability to know and regulate ourselves, and to understand and interact with others.Emotional in intelligence is the oil in the gears of any relationship machine.

Research is clear: high emotional intelligence—the ability to accurately understand and adaptively manage the thoughts and feelings of self, other, and the group—drives transformational leadership in organizations. Leaders who demonstrate high emotionally-intelligent leadership skills benefit on multiple fronts: they serve in their capacities with greater success, and they are more sustainable. Perhaps most importantly, though, emotionally-intelligent leaders establish the relational culture necessary for effective learning and growth. Students demonstrate academic and behavioral gains in schools in which emotional intelligence is consistently modeled by classroom-level leaders (i.e., instructional staff); classroom-level leaders consistently model social-emotional learning on campuses in which campus-level leadership demonstrates a commitment to emotional intelligence by modeling social-emotional learning.

Emotional intelligence could save your life. Literally. Consider the case of Jason Seaman.

Mr. Seaman, a 29-year-old science teacher at Indiana’s West Noblesville Middle School and former defensive lineman for Southern Illinois University, entered his classroom on May 25, 2018, starting his day off like any other. His students would take what would be their final science test of the school year.

As Mr. Seaman’s students took their test that morning, one student asked to be excused from class. He probably just requested a restroom break, but the details aren’t clear. What we do know is that moments later, that student returned to the classroom armed with .22 and .45 caliber handguns and immediately opened fire.

“Mr. Seaman started running at him,” a student witness reported, “He tackled him to the ground. We were all hiding in the back of the classroom behind some desks, and then Mr. Seaman was yelling to call 911, to get out of the building as fast as we could, so we ran out.”

Mr. Seaman’s actions were immediate and decisive, but the damage was done. Before Mr. Seaman could even reach the shooter, seven rounds struck a female student in the face, neck, hands and chest. As he rushed the student, Mr. Seaman was shot three times, once in the abdomen, once in the hip, and once in the forearm. He was able to disarm and detain the student until the school resource officer arrived to assist only moments after the initial shots were fired. Mr. Seaman was taken by ambulance to the Indiana University Hospital, where he made a full recovery. The wounded female student was also hospitalized in critical condition, yet she was expected to recover after having sustained collapsed lungs, a broken jaw, and significant nerve damage.

Let’s study the details of Mr. Seaman’s case in the context of emotional intelligence. Whether he was aware of the process or not, he demonstrated mastery of the five elements of emotional intelligence in a matter of seconds. First, he must have known the student was intensely angry, given the weapons in the student’s hands (social awareness/empathy). Since the urgency of the moment didn’t afford him the luxury of encouraging the student to simply talk through the feelings of intense anger (social skills), he knew he needed to intervene immediately and physically (responsible decision-making). He likely felt terror that a student was actively shooting (self-awareness), but he was able to control that emotion (self-regulation), as evidenced by his heroic actions.

The heart of our emotional intelligence lesson from Mr. Seaman is found in his words during a subsequent television interview: “I care deeply about my students and their well-being,” he noted to the reporter, “that’s why I did what I did that day.”

My goodness. That is powerful. What we learn from Mr. Seaman is that when we don’t have the luxury of time to consciously engage our emotional intelligence skills, our core-level beliefs—our deepest values, fears, biases and prejudices—drive our behavior automatically. Fortunately for the students in Mr. Seaman’s classroom that day, his core-level belief was that his students mattered above all, and it was that foundational belief that resulted in his automatic action to risk his life to save his students’ lives. There you have it, without hyperbole: the case of Mr. Seaman illustrates that the emotional intelligence skillset can save your life.