The Importance of Understanding and Labeling Emotions

Opatosky, Savage, Stevens, & Darrah, 2021). Giving students an awareness of and the tools to manage their emotions will help them better accept themselves, understand their situations, and be less self-judgmental when experiencing unpleasant feelings like envy, anger, and annoyance. We can help students learn to notice how they feel instead of penalizing themselves for not feeling or acting better, which will serve them well beyond the kindergarten through twelfth-grade experience. In doing so, and with practice, students will understand themselves and others better, which will result in their making better decisions in and out of the classroom.

This chapter focuses on three emotional intelligence competencies that make up the CASEL 5: (1) self-awareness, (2) social awareness, and (3) responsible decision making. It will first deepen your understanding of these concepts as well as offer strategies for helping students label emotions, including giving students the emotions planner from chapter 1 (page 31) as part of an emotions check-in as needed. I haven’t revised the emotions planner for students because I continually see in my coaching work that teachers have more success modeling tools they’ve already used. We will then focus on the connection between emotional intelligence and responsible decision making and study strategies for enhancing this skill.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TEACHERS

Remember, SEL is also an academic intervention for developing better learners . Consider the emotions planner activity as a cognitive process students can use throughout their lives for labeling and regulating emotions; restoring their inner peace; and preparing for learning, work, or play . I tell students that the planner can help them organize their thoughts, new learning, reflections, and next steps regarding their complex emotions . I also always show them a planner I completed myself (see figure 1 .2, page 27) . I do this because I want them to know that even adults face difficult emotions and need assistance for managing them . I also get better responses from students when they know I’m asking them to do something I am implementing for myself .

The Importance of Understanding and Labeling Emotions

Students need to understand that emotions are part of human nature. Emotions give them information about their internal experiences and help them know how to best respond in all situations. Babies, infants, and young children before preschool age (three to five years old) all sense emotions and react to behaviors like laughing,

touching, making facial expressions, or crying (Mcilroy, 2022). Although they feel and display emotions, young children from infancy and before school age can’t always name them yet, explain what they experience internally, or describe why they feel the way they do in a given situation. Instead, they often react to their emotions. Reacting to emotions in early development is primal, and it’s a good thing because it informs caregivers of how to best serve their needs (Mcilroy, 2022).

Unfortunately, as students move through the stages of adolescence, many don’t have adults in their lives to coach them through their complex emotions. As a result, they don’t fully comprehend emotions and often continue to react to them, which can be problematic in the classroom. The good news is children can become more skilled in understanding their emotions if they encounter SEL in school starting at ages three to five (Mcilroy, 2022). The following two sections detail how understanding emotions and knowing how to label them will help students become more self-aware and socially aware.

Self-Awareness

Instead of reacting to emotions as they did when they were younger, students in any grade can learn to identify their emotions and describe them using words (Cohen et al., 2021). With time and practice, they can get better at knowing what they experience and why, as well as the triggers that bring up these emotions. This range of skills is called self-awareness and is critical for emotional well-being and self-management.

To help learners get started, the first thing we need to do is help them name the emotions they experience. As previously covered in chapter 1 (page 15), psychologists call this labeling (David & Congleton, 2013). Once students can accurately label their emotions, we can then help them identify and implement an appropriate SEL strategy for getting themselves back in a peaceful state. We will learn to use daily emotions check-ins for this purpose and tie them to either impactful current events, happenings in the classroom, or the concepts and student work in the day’s lesson.

You can begin the labeling process early in the school year by engaging your students with Plutchik’s (2001) wheel of emotions and using the following simple steps for improving their understanding of emotions.

1. Introduce students to Plutchik’s (2001) wheel of emotions as a tool to simplify their emotions. If possible, print them a copy, or keep a postersize version somewhere visible in the classroom. See chapter 1, page 21, to revisit Plutchik’s wheel of emotions.

2. Have students identify and discuss the eight primary emotions on the wheel: (1) anger, (2) anticipation, (3) joy, (4) trust, (5) fear, (6) surprise,

(7) sadness, and (8) disgust. Structures for discussion may include In2Out and circle practice (Davenport, 2018; Valenzuela, 2022c). Good question prompts to guide discussions in either structure may include the following. • Describe a time when you saw someone on TV or a character in a story experience one of the eight primary emotions. What secondary emotions do you think they also experienced, and how did those visibly affect their mood? • Think of a time when a caregiver or teacher introduced a new strategy for overcoming a difficult emotion. How did the adult explain and model the process in ways that allowed you and other students to understand how to overcome the emotion?

• How do we know when emotional intelligence is part of our classroom culture, and how can each of us do our part? 3. Have students identify other emotions on the wheel, and help students connect them to the eight primary emotions. Be very careful not to trigger them. Have the students pick an emotion and identify feelings along with some preferred regulation strategies. 4. If possible, role-play different scenarios where students pretend to experience one of the basic emotions and ask students about possible self-management strategies they can implement for managing the difficult ones (like anger, sadness, and disgust). I like to give students the opportunity to contribute to lessons, but if they are unsure, this is where you can step in and suggest and model some good strategies. Discovering possible self-management strategies is a very powerful realization for students, as it serves to help them identify emotional triggers and begin planning how to respond.

The following vignette describes how a teacher might use Plutchik’s (2001) wheel of emotions during a lesson to help her students recognize and label their emotions using technology.

During initial emotions check-ins with her students, Kelly noticed that some students were having difficulty identifying the names of the emotions they were experiencing and kept referring to low-level terms like happy, angry, and sad instead. She wanted them to understand that emotions are complex and can influence their decisions, change their view of the world, and cause them to evaluate situations they encounter in different ways depending on which emotions they are feeling. Therefore,

Kelly displayed a graphic of Plutchik’s (2001) wheel of emotions and talked her students through the eight primary emotions. Together, they categorized the eight

emotions and how they tie to other emotions they may experience. She also provided a shared online copy of the emotions wheel graphic, which students could access daily as a scaffold for pinpointing their emotions during emotions check-ins.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TEACHERS

K–3 students may find the wheel too complex and overwhelming for labeling their emotions . Try using emojis or other visuals that will accomplish the same goal . You can introduce students to the wheel of emotions or emojis either in person or virtually using a simple graphic . Keep the graphic displayed by sharing your screen and having the graphic accessible in your learning management system so students can reference it for quickly assessing and labeling their emotions .

Social Awareness

Unlike self-awareness (focusing on self), social awareness involves considering the perspectives of others, including diverse groups and communities, and subsequently applying that understanding to interactions with those people. Moreover, social awareness is a learned skill that requires individuals to label their emotions and then find and apply appropriate strategies for relationship building and conflict resolution. Social awareness of others typically develops throughout childhood, even before schooling, as children establish friendships and begin empathizing with others (Mcilroy, 2022). This awareness increases significantly throughout adult life as people increasingly need to understand others’ views and perspectives in their personal and professional spaces. Additionally, both students and adults need to collaborate with others, whether at home or in school, and establishing good interpersonal relationships and interactions requires everyone to learn the basics about building a rapport. Building a keen social awareness of others in elementary school is easier if information about social awareness is readily available and if the adults in students’ lives model it appropriately. Unfortunately, scrolling through a student’s social media feed or scanning the local news, one can see that social awareness is lacking throughout politics and society. Beyond the outright trolling and bullying among young people on apps, political discord can get highly inflamed, as commentators don’t always express respect and regard for others who don’t share their views. Data suggest that 85 percent of U.S. adults say political debate has become more hostile and less socially respectful (Drake & Kiley, 2019). Additionally, most people in the United States

agree that elected officials should avoid inflammatory language because it could promote violence (Pew Research Center, 2019).

Although world and school conditions may discourage us, we can use SEL to help our students improve their perspectives for becoming kinder and more empathic toward others. The following key, calculated steps can help students navigate the basics of labeling their emotions for social awareness.

1. Students must recognize, or label, how they are showing up emotionally in their social interactions. They should begin labeling their emotions using either Plutchik’s (2001) wheel of emotions or emojis for younger students.

Figure 4.1 features an emoji chart for basic emotions. 2. Students must become keenly aware of how others are reacting or responding to them emotionally. This can be as simple as checking for body language, eye contact, voice tone, and tolerance to interact. According to the Watson

Institute (2022), students have four critical components to consider when interpreting body language during social interactions.

a. Facial expressions: Subtle cues can indicate whether someone’s response is good, standoffish, or neutral. b. Posture: Body positioning—mainly of the head, back, and shoulders—can be informative.

c. Gestures: What others do with their hands can indicate aggressiveness or peaceful emotions. d. Stance: This includes how someone stands and uses their arms (such as folding them across the chest).

Without these insights, students will find it difficult to learn and apply the appropriate relationship skills in different social situations. Plutchik’s wheel or emojis can also be a suitable scaffold for helping learners assess where they think a peer’s emotions reside.

Types of Basic Emotions

1. Happiness 2. Sadness 3. Fear 4. Disgust 5. Anger 6. Surprise

FIGURE 4.1: Emoji chart for basic emotions .

In figure 4.2, let’s examine a planner that covers a few different social interactions to see how students can begin to put these two key points into action. A blank reproducible version of this figure is available at the end of the chapter (page 85).

Difficult Social Interaction How the Student Is Showing Up Emotionally How Others Are Reacting or Responding to the Student Emotionally

Experiencing a first day at a new school Eight primary emotions: … Anger ; Anticipation … Joy … Trust ; Fear … Surprise … Sadness … Disgust ; Other emotions:

Winning an essay contest Eight primary emotions: … Anger … Anticipation ; Joy … Trust … Fear … Surprise … Sadness … Disgust ; Other emotions: Pride

Arriving at school with a new haircut (one the student doesn’t like) Eight primary emotions: … Anger … Anticipation … Joy … Trust … Fear … Surprise ; Sadness … Disgust ; Other emotions:

Nervousness Some students are avoiding interacting with me and turning their bodies away from me. Some even avoid eye contact.

Embarrassment Some of my classmates are snickering and pointing at me.

(Check for body language, eye contact, voice tone, and tolerance to interact.)

Not all my classmates are sharing in my enthusiasm, and it’s evident from their body language, lack of eye contact, and voice tone.

FIGURE 4.2: Emotions planner for students (featuring examples for learning to recognize how others are showing up in social interactions) .