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When awareness is brought to our emotions, power is brought to our life

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Developing greater emotional maturity is a challenge many adults struggle with, yet something we implicitly assume students will manage on their own.

But talking about our feelings is complex and messy and hard. It requires authenticity and vulnerability from young people in the midst of defining their sense of self and trying to fit in.

We create an environment of psychological and emotional safety by normalising dissenting opinions, and giving permission for students to open up by sharing our own heartfelt stories. By peeling away their masks and connecting with their authentic selves, students can connect with each other through empathy, understanding and an appreciation of similarities each other’s inner world.

Emotional intelligence isn’t ingrained, we can become smarter with feelings through conscious understanding and deliberate practice. The benefits of doing so are wide reaching.

Not only are emotionally intelligent students happier and more resilient, they share stronger relationships with their friends, family and teachers, make better decisions, communicate more effectively and perform better at school.

Value for Participants

Activity Showcase 1.

No matter how painful your weekend marking or what’s happening in your personal life, you’re still going to come to school on Monday and be professional in front of your students and colleagues.

We all put on these masks to veil how we’re really feeling, and shape them to fit the environment we’re in.

These masks are important. They protect us when we’re feeling vulnerable, help us be who we need to be, and keep us emotionally safe.

But we must also recognise they’re just masks. They don’t help us process the emotions we’re really feeling on the inside, and can prevent us from connecting authentically with others.

In our ‘Masks’ activity, students identify the masks they wear on the outside, and how they differ to their real feelings on the inside. We architect the opportunity for them to anonymously share and connected with each other’s authentic selves, where they recognise their deepest, toughest feelings are unknowingly shared by their friends too.

By modelling emotional authenticity and the strength of vulnerability through sharing their own stories, our facilitators safely take students to the depths necessary to affectively engage and meaningfully connect with this activity, and each other.

Below are some examples of the worksheets students have created:

Why Emotional Intelligence?

It was Albert Einstein that said “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is an idiot.”
Emotional Intelligence is one of the best predictors we have for long term success; not just financial or career success, but subjective satisfaction with the quality of our friendships, our family life and general wellbeing.
In fact, it is a far stronger predictor than our IQ.
The good news is unlike IQ, EQ is a skill we can improve, with understanding and practice.

We are stronger when we listen, and smarter when we share

COMMUNICATING WITH CONFIDENCE

Whether it’s with strangers or friends, parents or partners, communication is one of our most important skills. But having the confidence to share how we feel or bring up challenging topics without becoming frustrated or offending someone can be tough.

Without people in their lives to model pro-social communication skills, students can really struggle resolving conflict, making friends, being persuasive, having their emotional needs met, and feeling comfortable meeting new people.

Our Communication course gives students the skills they need to become better communicators, and to feel more confident doing so. We do this by diving into a greater understanding of how people work, and a number of fun activities with implicit communication lessons built right into them.

Being an effective communicator means thinking about what the other person is hearing, not just what you are saying. It requires empathy, finding the right moment, choosing the right words and conveying them in the right way.

It’s a foundational skill that will have huge impacts on not just our social lives, but our professional success too.

Value for students

Activity Showcase 1.

If an alien came to earth tomorrow, one of the many confusing things they’d encounter would be toast. How on earth do humans make it?

We ask students to visually depict the process of making toast in one minute, and then examine what assumptions they’d made about the alien’s knowledge without realising it. Did they show the importance of heat? How did they show time? Where did the bread come from?

Effective communication isn’t about describing what’s in our own head. It demands empathy to see the world from the other person’s perspective.

Students refine these skills with a fun follow-up game, in which one person faces the back of the room, and draws an abstract shape purely from the description of their paired partner. They can’t ask questions, and the describer can’t see what the drawer draws.

The results of their communication skills (or lack thereof) can be clearly seen on the paper in front of them.

Activity Showcase 2.

Our ‘Magnet Hands’ activity has students pair up, face each other, and hold their hands a few centimetres apart, as if a magnet were connecting them. They then take it in turns to be the ‘leader’ - slowly moving their hands while the other tries to mirror their movements.

Finally, we ask them to simultaneously lead the other person AND follow their movements, leading to a complex and hilarious interaction as they navigate taking and relinquishing control intuitively. Just like in our social lives, some people are naturally more dominant, while others are more passive.

We use the activity as an introduction to 3 communication styles - the passive pangolin who finds it challenging asking for what they need, the dominant dingo who can come across as aggressive or hog the limelight, and the assertive alpaca, who strikes a healthy balance in between.

Having identified their default social style, students learn strategies for gradually shifting themselves towards the assertive centre. Passive pangolins will learn to voice their opinion and contribute to the group, while dominant dingoes begin to take a step back and listen more to others.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

-Dr. Seuss

FINDING YOUR IDENTITY

High School is a turbulent time for teenagers.

As their focus shifts from having fun to fitting in, they must define for themselves who they are, what they value, how they relate to others, and ultimately who they want to be.

Some parts of our identity we can choose, while others we can’t. Transitioning to adulthood means understanding and accepting those parts of ourselves that are outside our control, while at the same time feeling empowered to explore and shape the malleable parts of our identity through our choices and behaviours.

Identity Is

FLUID

We aren’t the same person we were 5 years ago, and will be different again in 5 years time. Our experiences, values and choices will continue to shape who we are, and who we become.

RELATIONAL

Who we are depends on who we’re with. We show different sides of ourselves to our friends, our family and our classmates, and get to decide who sees what.

UP TO US

We also get to choose how we want to define ourselves. How we spend our time, who we share it with, what we value and what we aspire to are all choices we get to make.

Working out who you are as a teenager is tough. Their world is full of both shouting and subtle voices telling them who they should be - at home, in the playground and increasingly, online. Without the time and space to reflect and think about who they want to be, students are at risk of;

engaging in risky behaviours or seeking status symbols to fit in
rebelling from their parents or school to differentiate themselves
putting down or vilifying others to feel better about who they are
forming unhealthy cliques to avoid being isolated
struggling to regulate healthy behaviour in different environments

However, developing a strong and healthy sense of identity is within reach for all students.

Doing so creates positive self-esteem, which is fundamental to their wellbeing, relationships, creativity and academic performance. IRL is committing to helping students develop a positive sense of identity because we know from first-hand experience how important it is to a happy, healthy and balanced life.

Our course helps students develop their sense of identity through;

reflecting upon who they are at home, at school, and with their friends
identifying their strengths, capabilities and support networks
story sharing, group discussion and shared experience
using positive self-reflection to create a toolkit to manage challenging situations
shared commitments to how they want to feel and how they want others to feel

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

LEARNING TO LEARN

We do lots of learning in school, but we rarely examine learning at a higher level - what it is, how it works and how we can become better at it. This course investigates how our brains receive, interpret and process information, helping students become better learners at school, but also in their hobbies and passions outside the classroom.

Procrastination is a hangover of our evolutionary past. Understanding how it works in our brain is the first step to understanding how to defeat it.

We take a closer look at neuroplasticity and what it means for learning, how we can conquer procrastination, and what strategies we can use to supercharge our learning. Students also learn the difference between convergent and divergent thinking and why we need to be practising a lot more of the latter. They’ll take away strategies to improve their memory, understand the importance of curiosity and how to bring a ‘beginner’s mindset’ to every new challenge.

Learning is a situated activity. The environment we create for ourselves, and the routines and strategies we develop play a critical role in our learning. This class helps students develop healthy learning habits at home which will reduce their stress while improving their results.

Humans are the best learners on the planet, because we’re curious. We can’t learn something we’re not interested in, so cultivating curiosity is essential to being great learners.

Our learning environment is as big a determinant of our success as our attitude.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have

INNOVATION & CREATIVITY

We live in an age of exponential progress, and its effects can already be seen all around us. From genetically modified food to voice activated personal assistants, we're at the beginning of a new technological revolution that will define the 21st century.

Artificial intelligence, globalisation and blockchain often capture the headlines, but the pace of innovation will have effects closer to home for today's students. The ‘job for life’ careers are disappearing, while every job will require greater creativity, collaboration, agility and risk taking than before.

In a world where change is the only constant, students need to be literate in the language of innovation and creativity, understand their core principles and learn how to apply them in their own lives.

This course is heavily activity based, as students work together to creatively solve a problem in which they practise the skills of innovation including communication, collaboration, creativity and resilience. They’ll leave feeling informed about the innovation process, and inspired to create meaningful change.

Our experienced facilitators have worked in the Innovation sector and speak from their own experience, including designing apps for Google Glasses and world-first product launches.

In 1969 man walked on the moon for the first time using the most powerful computer in the world — In 1969 man walked on the moon for the first time using the **most powerful computer** in the world

Today, the average smartphone could launch 160 Million Saturn V rockets simultaneously from your pocket — Today, the average smartphone could launch **160 Million** Saturn V rockets simultaneously from your pocket

What cutting edge technology from today will be tomorrow's 'smartphone'?

This course is always a student favourite. We inspire them with new technology that will get them thinking about their future careers, challenge them with fun activities that hide deep lessons in the meaning of innovation, show them (from our facilitator’s personal experience) how innovation is actually practiced in the real world, and keep them engaged by forcing them to think creatively.