Your Name and Title:
Susan Stillman, Ed. D.
Director of Education
School or Organization Name:
Six Seconds, the Emotional Intelligence Network
Co-Presenter Name(s):
Ilaria Boffa, Program Manager, Six Seconds, Global Office
Area of the World from Which You Will Present:
USA (Mountain Standard time); Italy
Language in Which You Will Present:
English
Target Audience(s):
Educators (Teachers, counselors, school leaders) and Educational Consultants
Short Session Description (one line):
Experience the power of Social Emotional Learning: Lessons from a global virtual EQ course for 25K educators
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
What?
Social and Emotional Learning is a key ingredient for educators in the 21st century. The world needs change agents who can be role models for youth through a deep emotional literacy, authentic empathy and responsible optimism. In this presentation we’ll offer a glance at one possible strategy to initiate a process of transformation in schools and local communities. This strategy is called iSEL, Introduction to Social and Emotional Learning, a free virtual and experiential course where resources, activities and tools drive people toward a fresh awareness about the crucial role of integrating Emotional Intelligence in the classrooms. Contributions from top scientists, experts and practitioners pioneering in this field, enrich the iSEL modules and provide a research-based approach. The session will allow participants to interact and experience concrete EQ skills to practice at school and at home.
Why?
While education focuses on cognitive skills, research shows that social and emotional skills are also essential. Increasingly, teachers see this value; in a recent study, teachers overwhelmingly agreed that social emotional skills are the missing piece to improve student outcomes and transform our schools. Researchers have convincingly demonstrated the impact that social emotional learning programs can have on student behavior, engagement, and academic achievement.
The question is: How important is SEL for our global community? How can you put this into practice in your classroom or school?
How?
iSEL is a virtual training, blending recorded lectures, discussions, readings, and practical assignments that is open to all educators around the world at no cost.
This session will describe lessons learned from our first months of the virtual course. Participants will experience some of the activities and learn how educators and parents can sign up, participate in discussion groups, and later become group discussion leaders themselves and reach even more people in their own schools and communities.
This presentation? Additional information connecting our presentation to the mission of the Global Education Conference:
Our iSEL presentation is directly related to the mission of the Global Education Conference. Six Seconds, the sponsoring organization is a collaborative global network of educators and others focused on supporting people to increase their EQ. The purpose of our presentation is to inspire educators throughout the world to learn about the value of emotional intelligence and social emotional learning in their global work. The presentation will focus on some of the key EQ skills needed by all global change agents, and especially educators and students wanting to solve real-world problems. Our goal is to inspire global change makers to develop the skills of emotional intelligence a to assist them in increasing self awareness, making the best possible choices, and connecting to others with empathy and purpose that is collaborative, outside themselves, and for the common good. Social emotional learning is the promotion of EQ skills within any educational context. Social emotional learning has been shown to significantly increase not only social and life skills but also academics. It is a critical set of skills not only for students, but for parents, for all educators, and for community members intent on ANY change making process.
The presentation will also share one particular strategy, a FREE global online course for educators, that we have developed for furthering this important work. ISEL is a six session virtual course that hundreds of educators, as well as parents, activiists, coaches, and administrators have acknowledged as ground-breaking and transformative for their work. It is designed to be done independently and also with small discussion groups virtually accessible or done locally by global educators who wish to further spread the skills of SEL in their home communities. The program consists of videos, readings, discussion posts and EQ activities to practice in one's own work and family.
Educators can utilize the incredible resources found within (resources shared and donated from skilled educators around the world), with the purpose to work collaboratively with others to bring social emotional learning structures and strategies to their own schools and communities. Once participants take the course, they are encouraged to volunteer to lead discussion groups on social emotional learning in their own settings or virtually, in their own countries and in their own language. Not only will participants learn about the course, they will also directly experience some of the competencies, such as emotional literacy, empathy, and optimism, that are essential in any change process and be able to take away a few practices that are meaningful and immediately applicable. Participating in iSEL is an opportunity to develop key EQ skills needed by activists and change agents.
Our non-profit organization, Six Seconds, is dedicated to collaborative global efforts related to EQ. With this in mind, we have created a member website, eq.org, where anyone can suggest a change-making project and seek others to work on it. iSEL was our first global project, and hundreds of educators have enrolled and completed it. Currently we are working on a free EQ 101 Parenting course, which will be available to anyone who wishes to support parents in using EQ to become better at handling the challenges and joys of parenting. On eq.org, we have also completed a project on empathy, which is a much needed global competency to support a more peaceful world. We have completed a project on Connection. We also have Groups that anyone can start, to share ideas and efforts in a particular interest area. We will encourage all participants in our presentation to join EQ.org (for free) to collaborate on projects with others who share the same passions and goals for change. Our network is focused on supporting people around the globe to create positive change through EQ.
Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:
http://www.6seconds.org
http://eq.org
Views: 4
Replies
Hi Susan -
Are you representing a for profit organization?
Thanks,
Lucy Gray
Conference Co-Chair
Hi Lucy:
No, Six Seconds is a global non-profit organization. We have 100,000+ members of our network around the world in 75+ countries. We also have a free member website, eq.org, to encourage collaborative projects throughout the world on EQ. This iSEL course is one of these collaborative projects, where we motivate people who have taken the course to lead discussion groups themselves where ever they are or virtually to spread EQ to 1Billion people, which is our goal.
www.6seconds.org
Susan
Okay, very helpful information! I'm wondering how your work relates to our mission: http://www.globaleducationconference.com/notes/The_GEC_Mission_Stat.... Direct ties may be implied, but we would like to see more direct language that explains how your proposed topic fits in with our focus on global connections and collaboration. Remember, this is not a general education conference nor an ed tech conference.
Also, it looks like you cut and paste material in here, perhaps from your web site or a previous proposal. Can you edit your proposal so that the formatting is consistent?
Please edit your proposal by November 15th and email me when you are finished so that I can review this again.
Thanks,
Lucy
Hi Lucy:
We've edited the discussion to hopefully show you the connections to the global education conference mission.
Thanks for the consideration and let us know any further questions you may have.
Warmly, Susan