What Is Self-Awareness and How To Teach It?
What’s Self-Awareness?
Growing emotionally, academically, and professionally from early ages and later in life is necessitated by the present-day world’s demands for strong social skills, emotional IQ, decision-making, deep thinking, and rethinking. Self-awareness, unlike other SEL competencies, has been taken on seriously because by nurturing self-awareness, we can identify our limitations and capabilities.
Multiple self-awareness definitions testify to the inherent complexity of the construct. Because the self-awareness construct is hard to capture, measure, or detect, there is plenty of definitions for self-awareness depending on the field (ex. psychology vs. education) and the medium that presents the information (blogs vs. scientific articles vs. dictionary).
According to the APA Dictionary of Phycology, self-awareness is “self-focused attention and knowledge.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines self-awareness as “an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality.”
As you noticed, the latter has grown more complex because it deeps into personality and individuality, the multifaceted constructs in themselves.
CASEL, (The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning), for example, describes self-awareness as “the ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. The ability to accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a growth mindset.”
Notice how heavy and less tangible the concept of self-awareness becomes! Self-awareness comprises emotion recognition and also spreads into thoughts, values, self-confidence, optimism, growth mindset.
Social Emotional Development is Important to Life Success.
A multifaceted concept, self-awareness is yet only one of the widely recognized core competencies of SEL or Social-Emotional Learning.
Recently, SEL has navigated to the spotlight of our everyday lives, and especially the education field. The pandemic, which forced us into isolation and reduced communication opportunities in a “normal” way, has made social-emotional learning a prerequisite for education at any level.
With so many people wondering, “What is social-emotional development?” and “Why is social-emotional development important?” – it’s probably a good idea to remember that social-emotional development is not a new curriculum that just evolved out of the pandemic crisis (2019 and on), it’s something more common in our lives.
Social-emotional development begins at a very young age. If you are a parent, you might have noticed that every visit to a pediatrician with a baby involves the doctor evaluating the basic and essential social-emotional skills ranging from smiling, sucking the thumb for soothing, making eye contact, etc. for babies to developing friendships, cooperating with rules, understanding the difference between real-life and make-believe for 4- and 6-year olds.
When a child grows, social-emotional development becomes incorporated into academic performance, socialization with peers, and later the level of social-emotional “readiness” can impact career success and life success.
Social-emotional development is often described in the context of social-emotional skills and social-emotional learning. To begin to define, it would take another post or even a book.
Many frameworks and programs give different interpretations of social-emotional learning and skills.
However, even though the program and frameworks can be different, they all attempt to deepen our understanding of one crucial point: social-emotional skills are essential in successful academic performance and building a successful life.
According to CASEL, social-emotional learning or SEL is “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”
Don’t let this lengthy definition to confused you and give up on the “fluff.”
This is not fluff.
Having or lacking social-emotional competencies (ex.: self-confidence, self-efficacy, empathy, respect for others, reflecting, identifying problems, goal setting, social engagement, respect for others, etc.) will determine, simply speaking, the pathway of a child from school to professional and personal life. It includes academic studies, successful careers, relationships, financial success, life fulfillment.
This sounds unbelievably powerful.
If you wonder why social-emotional development is essential, Vanessa Vega highlighted some clear examples from Edutopia. Social and emotional learning programs:
- reduce aggression and emotional distress among students,
- increase helping behavior in schools,
- improve positive attitudes towards self and others,
- contribute to academic achievement,
- support students’ well-being and success,
- provide such long-term benefits as fewer psychological and behavioral, and substance abuse problems,
- lead students to higher educational attainment and stronger employment,
- promote better mental health,
- contribute to reducing criminal activity and substance use,
- lead to long-term benefits such as positive economic benefits in the future, and many others.
But let’s go back to self-awareness.
How Can Self-Awareness Push You To Change Your Life?
In my life, self-awareness has grown out of self-help books that I turned to when desperation and job stress have driven me to the edge.
In 2016, when I cried dramatically in my car on the way to work, I decided to learn about happiness and become happy. I realized my misery and negativity were taking over my life, and I had no choice but to confront them on a cold September morning.
Was I showing self-awareness that day? Does being self-aware lead to changes in one’s life or, maybe, pushes you to leap into some dramatic transformation?
The second biggest encounter of mine with self-awareness took place when my daughter was diagnosed with Selective Mutism. This anxiety disorder has prevented her from talking to teachers and peers for two years of school. That’s a long time to be “shy,” isn’t it?..
When we started therapy, I learned a lot about what constitutes self-awareness and why it is essential. I knew that specific triggers would make my child scream and show oppositional behavior, be disgusted by a “slimy” sandwich and “weird, scary” drink. Digging into self-awareness, emotions, triggers, emotion regulation was like getting a lifeline for my daughter and the whole family.
Can We Teach Self-Awareness in Classrooms?
Grab this FREE teacher’s guide to self-awareness in a classroom.
The answer to these questions can be different depending on who gives the information.
As a mom of a Selective Mutism child, I attest that teaching my child to recognize, accurately label emotions, and regulate her behavior has been the most challenging but the most critical decision I’ve even made. When my child’s anxiety picks, it prevents her from verbalizing the needs and frustrations. Bottled up for a day in “silence” or her storm inside, my daughter relies on emotion regulation and recognition to function normally.
As a teacher in a classroom, I recognize the benefit of self-awareness and self-regulation for kids as the cornerstone of successful academic development and future success in life. Hating homework, disruptive behavior, inability to cooperate with peers, lack of self-motivation can easily transfer into adult life and become the staple of an unhappy and unfulfilling life.
Yet, when it comes to education, self-awareness might be a scary concept to teach and unpack due to many reasons. Because self-awareness has many “sub-competencies,” the only way an educator can attempt to dissect the construct of self-awareness is by referring to the well-established frameworks to see that the teaching of self-awareness will have to address emotion recognition, accurate self-perception, recognizing strengths, self-confidence, self-efficacy.
I can tell you honestly that even my early 30s lacked all of those big ideas. Survival mode on the job and deep unhappiness deprived me of self-confidence and optimism. Growth mindset ideas and finding one’s worth and limitations came into my life after I had gobbled dozens of books on self-improvement and mindset shift.
Even now, the intangible self-awareness sub-constructs (growth mindset, optimism, ability to regulate one’s behavior) often slip away when I try to juggle online teaching, planning, graduate school, personal business, and family.
Can you IMAGINE teaching self-awareness to children, and can we teach it? Will kids get optimism, personal limitations, and strength?
The answer is YES…
It’s not only possible to teach self-awareness to kids. It’s VITAL to their emotional development.
While teaching self-awareness and other Social-Emotional Learning competencies can be challenging for many reasons, yet doable 100%, learning about social-emotional development and raising one’s emotional IQ are necessary steps to take.
A. Self-Awareness Activities for Groups in a Classroom.
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) outlines 5 key competencies of social-emotional learning:
- Self-awareness
- Self-management
- Social awareness
- Relationship skills
- Responsible decision making
Let’s focus on the first key-competence – SELF-AWARENESS.
According to CASEL, SELF-AWARENESS is defined as:
The ability to accurately recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior.
In addition, with the sub-competencies, such as self-perception, strengths recognition, self-confidence, and self-efficacy, self-awareness can be taught by focusing on multiple concepts one at a time.
The first and most simple step should include teaching feelings, emotions and how they impact behavior.
To provide students with the opportunity to recognize their feelings, thoughts, and their influence on behavior, teachers are advised to create self-awareness activities and exercises for groups where learners:
- gain age-appropriate vocabulary words,
- are engaged in a class activity that asks students to identify feelings,
- discuss scenarios and talk about how each situation might make them feel,
- examine age-appropriate physical and emotional cues of a particular feeling/ emotion,
- have small-group discussions to talk about how emotions can influence behavior and many others.
Among the vocabulary words and the ideas behind them that students are supposed to be familiar with are:
- happy
- sad
- hurt
- mad
- disappointed
- rejected
- angry
To be able to label their emotion accordingly, young learners exploring social-emotional learning in the elementary classroom need to:
A1. develop a clear understanding of what “happy, sad, hurt, mad, disappointed, rejected, angry” mean.
How can a teacher do it?
Through a self-awareness activity for groups and partners, a teacher can provide students with a definition of a feeling they explore and target in the lesson and discuss synonyms.
A2. know how these words (“happy, sad, hurt, mad, disappointed, rejected, angry”) are used in a context.
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can introduce feelings in a context of a story and follow up with some discussion questions about what happened in the story. Students should be able to see how feelings accompany many things people do.
A3. engage in a discussion about physical and emotional cues of a particular feeling/ emotion.
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in discussing what feelings look and feel like and discuss facial expressions and physical sensations.
A4. interact with peers in a group discussion about emotions/ feelings.
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can provide questions for group/pair discussions that urge students to connect with their lives.
A5. know the tools that help cope with negative emotions.
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in a discussion about the coping tools that help manage feelings and ask students to think about which of them would benefit their lives.
A6. be able to reflect on their one learning about emotions/ feelings.
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher should give students time for self-reflection through timed writing activities with prompts and exit tickets.
When can these self-awareness learning activities for groups be taught? You can teach the concepts as:
- stand-alone lessons
- part of health studies
- part of ELA lessons
Explore these resources to teach feelings:
B. Self-Awareness Activities for Groups to Teach Emotions and Their Connection to Behavior.
In order to provide students with the opportunity to learn about feelings and their impact on behavior, teachers can create self-awareness activities for groups and independent work where students:
- gain age-appropriate vocabulary words their definitions (happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust)
- learn about physiological and behavioral responses that are at the core of emotions,
- discusses age-appropriate physical and emotional cues of a particular emotion,
- understand that people’s emotions are expressed differently,
- are engaged in a class activity to identify physiological and behavioral reactions to emotions,
- have small-group discussions to talk about how emotions can influence behavior and how to manage emotions,
- discuss scenarios and talk about what situations causes certain emotions, how emotions reveal themselves, and how to manage them,
- brainstorm and design their toolkits to manage emotions,
- have small-group discussions to talk about how emotions can influence behavior
B1. To be able to develop a good understanding of what emotions are and how they influence behavior, young learners exploring social-emotional learning in the elementary classroom need to:
- develop a clear understanding of what “happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust” mean.
How can a teacher do it?
Through a self-awareness activity for groups and partners, a teacher can provide students with a definition of emotions and explain that emotions are born from experiences and have physiological and behavioral responses.
B2. To be able to develop a good understanding of behavioral and physical response at the core of emotions, young learners need to:
- learn about physiological and behavioral responses that are at the core of emotions,
- discusses age-appropriate physical and emotional cues of a specific emotion,
- understand that people’s emotions are expressed differently,
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in a discussion of physiological and behavioral responses that are at the core of emotions and provide activities where students are asked to recognize how a person feels and behaves when experiencing a particular emotion.
B3. To be able to develop the understanding of how to manage emotions emotions, young learners need to:
- have small-group discussions to talk about how emotions can influence behavior and how to manage emotions,
- discuss scenarios and talk about what situations causes certain emotions, how emotions reveal themselves, and how to manage them,
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in a discussion of scenarios and situations that provoke certain emotions and ask students to give suggestions about how to manage them.
B4. To be able to develop management techniques for emotions, young learners need to:
- brainstorm and design their toolkits to manage emotions,
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in a discussion of possible emotions management tips.
B5. To be able to retain knowledge about the concepts of emotions and emotion management, young learners need to:
- reflect on what they have learned and who their knowledge
How can a teacher do it?
A teacher can engage students in group/ pair discussion questions that prompt students to connect to their experiences of expressing emotions in real life. A teacher also should provide opportunities for self-reflection through exit tickets and assessment.
Explore this resource to teach the connection of emotions to behavior:
If you need more support, explore done-for-you activities for groups to teach feelings. Each feeling is explored in detail through writing, speaking, and reading activities. You can get:
Interested in how to teach emotions and their influence on behavior?
Consider this “Emotions & Behavior” Journal.
If you are determined to make the social-emotional learning part of your classroom, watch FREE “Mindful Teacher” workshop.
I will show you the easiest and the fastest ways to integrate mindfulness in your teaching WITHOUT having to follow another curriculum.
This workshop will give you ideas and tools you can put into your toolkit to start designing your own mindful classroom!
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Talk to you later!
Yanina.
