At every GIIS school, we approach education through a holistic lens. We see every student as a whole person, because we know that this is the best way to help them develop the skills that they need to navigate into successful adult lives. While academic success is paramount to everything we do, we also consider Emotional Intelligence (EI) to be an essential component of the quality education we offer.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
EI is typically defined as a set of skills that includes emotional awareness, emotional regulation, and the ability to harness emotions into thoughts and into actions. Developing EI not only helps students be kinder, more empathetic people, but certain practices that help build EI, like the kind of mindfulness practices we incorporate at GIIS, can also help students actually increase their brain density!
How the 9 GEMS™ framework nurtures Emotional Intelligence
Our dynamic 9 GEMS™ framework offers several pathways to improve EI, including our focus areas of Personality Development, Universal Values and Ethics, and Community and Care. One recent event that helps provide an example for how these values play out within our school is our GIIS Inter - School Weave -a-Tale Storytelling Contest. Children were encouraged to not only utilize their communication and creativity skills, but also bring their ability to listen and support one another. Sharing narratives within a school community can be a great way to build empathy, and create a culture in which sharing emotions is not only normal, but something that is truly valued.
We also offer students the chance to build their EI through programming like the GIIS Queenstown Peace Curriculum. This successful program has been offered for the last three years, and emphasizes non-violent communication through empathy, kindness, and learning both self awareness and personal responsibility. This innovative curriculum is an excellent example of the kind of commitment GIIS has to nurturing students' abilities to understand not only their own emotions, but those of others as well. GIIS Queenstown has also worked in tandem with Friends of Singa to create the Kindness Movement, which encourages students to engage in regular mindfulness activities and then act out their values of empathy and compassion in their school community and beyond.
To learn more about GIIS, and the ways in which we infuse our unique instructional model with regular opportunities for emotional growth, please contact us today!
