How to tend to the emotional aspects of learning

(For a summary/systematic reading, please read the topic sentences of each paragraph, a 1-minute read)

Preramble: I was a math teacher. Stereotypically we're not the type of people that might understand or engage in emotions as well as our humanitarian counterparts. But despite the opinion to the contrary, we are in fact, not robots. So I want to start this newsletter in 2023 with what I believe is the most important part of learning. Emotion.

At times the emotional aspect of learning can be lost in the maelstrom of content and targets. It can feel like those in power seem to be ignorant of the power of subtraction. Instead, we find ourselves with more reports to write, more parent-teacher conferences to run, and more extra-curricular activities to support. With nothing giving way to allow the focus to be redirected. Inevitably something has to be dropped, and it's often the immeasurable components of long-term importance that do.

When one individual is interacting with over a hundred students a day it's hard to find the time and cognition to attend to them emotionally. That goes doubly for the introverted teachers out there.

The loss of focus on emotion usually happens at crunch times within the year. Ironically, as our emotions rise our capacity to tend to the emotions of others falls. Report season, exam marking, and parent-teacher conferences are typical culprits for this. It'd be interesting to run a survey in your school on student well-being during these times of the year and see if there's a correlation with regard to the teachers'.

The classroom is not an ideal set-up for emotionally fraught experiences among children. Our emotions are incredibly complex and every single person in that room is bringing with them an entire life they lead outside of it. Quite frankly, your lesson is likely minuscule in the grand scheme of your students' lives and if they are going through something that is wreaking havoc with their emotions outside of your classroom the likelihood is that you won't fix it inside of your classroom.

This is why we have pastoral structures within schools to handle the most severe cases. So your job as a teacher in this realm is to be able to spot who needs this structure most. You can create a wonderful learning environment that is attuned to the emotions of each individual and encourages psychological safety for students to share. But it will never be the environment that can solve emotional problems that happen outside of it. Accepting this fact can go a long way in helping your well-being and thus those of your students.

However, as mentioned, we can set up our environments to establish an excellent emotional baseline for students to learn.

1. Manage your own emotions first. This doesn't mean putting on a brave face when you enter the classroom. 'Emotions are an embodied response to a stimulus (whether real or perceived, external or internal)'. Trust me, your students are likely more attuned to you than you know. Where there is little communication there is a multitude of perceptions and thus emotions. You don't have to go into the why of what you are feeling. However, being open with your students about how you are feeling will allow everyone to get on the same page and understand the context they are learning in for the day. You're human, don't be afraid to show that. This will in turn model how students should communicate their own emotions and thus self-regulate.
2. Explicitly plan for your learning culture in the course. This might sound blasphemous to some, but I would gladly sacrifice the required content in my curriculum to demonstrate the value of my students' curiosity. An example of this was my 'Question Lessons' practice. We would have a Cornell notetaking margin that my students were encouraged to ask any question they wanted as long as it related to math in some way. I would then dedicate an entire lesson to these questions and allow the students to follow up with further questions and 'derail' the lesson if they so wished. This proves a fantastic tonic to those burned out with the mandatory nature of a 'core' subject. Decide which are your most vital emotions for your learning environment and make explicit action to promote these.
3. Be aware of, and act cognitively, to students' emotional states. It's important to remember that behaviour is communication for those that can't use words. If you're teaching anyone below the age of 21 they are still building their brains and have so many more obstacles than adults to overcome when understanding how they feel and why. So their negative emotions will come to light through tone, non-verbal cues or choice of language. It is vital for us to focus on these actions as indicators of a problem needing to be solved and not react to them emotionally ourselves. This is by far the hardest when you yourself are going through difficult times. Hence why sharing your emotions is number one on this list.

For more eloquent theory and implementations please check out the first reference below. There are many more ways we can bring the emotional aspect of learning to our cognizance when the pressures mount. It's painful how easy it is to lose focus on the vital stuff when the day-to-day narrows our vision. So while you have the time, zoom out a little.

Reference/Further Reading:

• A. Osika et al. - 2022 - Emotions and learning: what role do emotions play in how and why students learn? - Times Higher Education
• Srini Pillay - 2017 - Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus - Harvard Business Review
• A. Frenzel et al. - 2015 - Teaching This Class Drives Me Nuts! - Examining the Person and Context Specificity of Teacher Emotions - Plos One