Spencer's Thinkpad

Emotion-Friendly Teaching: A Peek Preview

Dr. Spencer Kagan

To cite this article: Kagan, S. Emotion-Friendly Teaching: A Peek Preview. Kagan Online Magazine, Issue #60. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing. www.KaganOnline.com

After publishing Brain-Friendly Teaching in 2014, I realized that book was to become the first of three in a trilogy. The premise of Brain-Friendly Teaching is that if teachers are the only profession in the world whose job it is to daily rewire a classroom full of brains, then it is best that they understand brains and how to rewire them efficiently. Having finished that book, I realized there were two more bodies of research that should be foundational knowledge for all teachers: Emotion and Memory. It was then that I decided Brain-Friendly Teaching would be followed by two more books: Emotion-Friendly Teaching and Memory-Friendly Teaching.

Why Memory-Friendly Teaching? The research on memory keeps expanding. We have distinct, independent memory systems. We store facts in a very different part of the brain than procedures, and we remember episodes in an entirely different way yet. As teachers we need to know which kind of memory we are trying to create at any moment and which instructional strategies are efficient for creating that type of memory. Otherwise our teaching will be hit-or-miss. That is, teachers too often try to create a procedural memory using an instructional strategy that is efficient for creating a semantic memory, or vice versa. Thus, understanding of the memory systems and how to efficiently place our academic content in the appropriate memory systems using appropriate instructional strategies should be foundational knowledge for every teacher. After all, all teaching is creating memories.

Why Emotion-Friendly Teaching? The research on emotion also keeps expanding. We now know tremendously more about emotion than we did when I went to graduate school 50 years ago. At that time, we took courses in emotion and we took courses in cognition, but cognition was never mentioned in the courses on emotion and emotion was never mentioned in the courses on cognition. Now we know the two are intimately related, and our teaching needs to reflect that. If we want to efficiently teach, we need to create emotion-friendly classrooms. By changing the emotional tone in our classrooms and by eliciting emotion in systematic ways among our students, we change student brains in ways that make teaching and learning dramatically more efficient.

How is the book Emotion-Friendly Teaching organized? As I write this article, I have a profound sense of completion. Yesterday I sent the final chapter of Emotion-Friendly Teaching off to the editor, my son Miguel. I feel a sense of completion. Emotion-Friendly Teaching will be published some time this summer. The book has three parts, each of which is foundational knowledge for any teacher:
            Part I: Eliciting Emotions as We Teach
            Part II: Teaching Students to Understand and Manage Their Emotions
            Part III: Kagan Structures

A Peek into the Three Parts

Part I: Eliciting Emotions as We Teach

Eliciting a range of emotions as we teach leads to:

• Improved Cognition
• Strengthened Memory
• Increased Motivation
• Greater Relevance, and
• Enhance Meaning

Emotion-Friendly Teaching examines a dozen ways to evoke emotions as we teach. For each of the twelve ways, there are many examples of easy-to-implement, teacher-proven lessons and activities provided by Kagan Professional Development trainers and those with whom they work.

Some of the activities are extremely simple. For example, Carissa Farrell offers this tip:

RallyCoach: Friendly Greetings
When we engage in Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures such as RallyCoach, we begin by choosing a friendly greeting to say to our partners, such as, ‘I’m so happy we get to be partners today!’
—Carissa Farrell, Kindergarten 
Athenian Academy, New Port Richey, FL

Some of the activities are far more complex. I must admit that from all of the over 50 activities I reviewed for the Emotion-Friendly Teaching, my very favorite was a unique way of teaching one dimensional kinematics:

Bean the Teacher
One dimensional kinematics is the study of the motion of an object in a straight line and proved to be one of my students’ favorite lessons. It can become mundane if the emphasis of instruction is on plug-and-chug worksheets to solve made up problems such as how long it will take for a ball to hit the ground from a certain height. I made this lesson emotionally engaging by designing a performance assessment where students would have the chance to drop a water balloon from the third-floor window in an attempt to hit me as I walked at a constant velocity on ground level from a prescribed distance. A direct hit would earn an A, a splash on my clothes would earn a B, and so on. The theoretical calculations were challenging for my 9th graders, but when the day came for them to complete the paper-and-pencil calculations in preparation, the students’ eagerness for mathematical precision was palpable. Some students confidently boasted that they would nail me with a water balloon while others doubted themselves but couldn’t wait for their chance to see if they were correct. On the day of the balloon drop students were both excited and nervous and took their stopwatches to the third-floor window. My colleague facilitated each student's opportunity by yelling a three second countdown from the window for me to start walking and for students to begin the time. I was drilled by several water balloons that day, accomplishments which I still hear about 10 years later. 
—J.J. Gregg, 9th Grade Conceptual Physics
Archbishop Carroll High School, Washington, D.C.

By changing the emotional tone in our classrooms and by eliciting emotion in systematic ways among our students, we change students' brains in ways that make teaching and learning dramatically more memorable and efficient.

In the last decade, a great deal of research has established that by eliciting positive emotions, we change the brain in ways that dramatically improve a range of types of thinking. Remarkably, eliciting positive emotion results in:

• Higher Test Scores
• Broader Thinking
• Broader Perception
• Improved Problem Solving
• Greater Creativity, and
• Higher IQ

Emotion-Friendly Teaching identifies ten positive emotions appropriate for the classroom and provides many ways to elicit each. Many of the activities to elicit positive emotions are based on proven Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures.

Because many teachers attempt to elicit positive emotions using praise and rewards, in a final chapter in this first part of the book, I overview the Do’s and Don’ts of praise and rewards. In that chapter we examine how rewards given in certain ways undermine intrinsic motivation and ways to give praise that reap the benefits of eliciting positive emotion without undermining intrinsic motivation.

Part II: Teaching Students to Understand and Manage Their Emotions

It was 50 years ago, as I trained to become a clinical psychologist, that I realized that the primary reason people were seeking therapy was because they did not understand and could not manage their emotions. In the process of helping my clients, I developed an emotion matrix that ,with time, evolved into what is now the Kagan Emotion Wheel.

The Kagan Emotion Wheel is at the heart of Part II. The Emotion Wheel helps students locate themselves in emotional space and to move in emotional space. Using the Kagan Emotion Wheel, we help students understand and manage their emotions. This part of the book provides chapters on the research rationale for the wheel, how to present and teach the wheel to students, and how to use the wheel to facilitate in students’: Self-Knowledge Self-Control Motivation, and Empathy

Students learn that with increased intensity, primary emotions become more intense which, in turn, if not controlled, lead to actions—sometimes actions we later regret. Students learn not only self-control techniques, but also self-motivation techniques and how to identify with the emotions of others.

Part III: Kagan Structures

The third part of the book contains step-by-step instructions for thirty-three proven Kagan Structures. These are the structures used throughout the book. But like any Kagan Structures, they can be used to deliver any content.

In Sum

Creating an emotion-friendly classroom corrects the present imbalance in education created by an over-emphasis on educational outcomes narrowly defined by achievement tests. More importantly, creating an emotion-friendly classroom fosters a range of crucial educational outcomes including:

• Improved Thinking, Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Creativity
• Enhanced Memory and Achievement
• Greater Relevance and Meaning
• Increased Self-Knowledge
• Strengthened Self-Control
• Heightened Motivation
• Expanded Empathy, and
• Joy in Teaching and Learning

If we are to help our students become all they can be, we need to correct the imbalance, responding to the needs of the whole student. Wonderfully, as we attend more to the emotional needs of our students, we do not do so at the expense of our students’ cognitive development: By creating emotion-friendly classrooms, we enhance—rather than diminish—cognitive and academic attainment.