Category: Emotional Intelligence

Why We Need Emotional Intelligence for Academic Achievement

Available for Interviews:  Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is an education advocate, speaker, and the CEO & Founder of WURRLYedu, an educational technology platform. Nadine specializes in the social-emotional curriculum (SEL), and she is also the author of the children’s book, My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village. 

What Nadine Levitt can say
Emotions and Academic Achievement:

There has been a tremendous focus on the declining academic achievement of students since the start of the pandemic, as well as a rise in issues relating to mental health and well-being. But the link between the two is not often talked about.

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3 Techniques to Apply Mindful Parenting

Available for Interviews: Dr. Pete Loper

Dr. Pete Loper, MD, MSEd, FAAP, is a triple board-certified physician in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child psychiatry. He is also a professor and executive coach and is dedicated to mental health and wellness advocacy.

What Dr. Loper could say on
Mindful Parenting:

  • Put simply, mindfulness is being fully present where your feet are on the ground. Instead of perseverating on the past, or worrying about the future, mindfulness is an active practice of being fully present with one’s thoughts and feelings at the moment. 
  • Mindful parenting is the practice of supporting and responding to your child instead of dictating and reacting to emotions.  It’s about acceptance of the “here and now,” without judgment and as it comes, instead of trying to alter or escape from it.  

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Cultivating Emotional Intelligence for a Healthy Mind and Body

Available for Interviews:  Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is an education advocate, speaker, and the CEO & Founder of WURRLYedu, an educational technology platform. Nadine specializes in the social-emotional curriculum (SEL), and she is also the author of the children’s book, My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village. 

What Nadine Levitt can say in an interview on
Emotional Intelligence:

    • Emotional intelligence is an understanding of how emotions work, and how they can be processed for a healthy mind and body. But what is unique about the My Mama Says approach is that we don’t teach it in a singular way (meaning one emotion at a time)—the reason for that is that we never feel one emotion—they ALWAYS come in groups. And since they influence each other, emotions can look very different depending on what other emotions they present themselves with. The way we look, act, and feel is the result of the entire group of emotions, NOT just a single emotion.

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Supporting Our Children’s Emotional Intelligence & Empathy

Available for Interviews: Dr. Colleen Cira

Dr. Colleen Cira, PsyD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist as well as the Founder and Executive Director of the Cira Center for Behavioral Health. She is an anxiety and trauma expert as well as a consultant, supervisor, speaker, writer, and advocate.

What Dr. Colleen Cira can say in an interview about
Supporting Your Child’s EQ & Empathy:

Dr. Cira has worked with hundreds of people struggling to parent the way they’d ideally like to. There are several ways that you can increase your child’s emotional intelligence and empathy.

        1. You must have empathy yourself. The most effective way that kids learn is by watching the way their parents behave. If YOU, the parent, have and demonstrate empathy, your children will grow up to be empathic. Give money to homeless folks, check in on friends, family, and neighbors who are ill and/or struggling, take your child to a peaceful, family-friendly protest, volunteer at a food bank together. SHOW UP the way you’d like your child to show up someday.
        2. You must accept your child’s emotions. This sounds easy but is not. It’s hard to see our children hurting—we’re actually biologically programmed to struggle to tolerate it. We want to make it better for them if they are sad. We want to make it go away if they are angry. But in order for our kids to learn how to accept other people’s feelings as they are, we have to teach them how to accept THEIR OWN feelings and the only way to do that is when WE accept their feelings. Let your kids experience big feelings without fixing or punishing.
        3. When your kid has an absolute meltdown about something, once they’re calm, talk it through with them. When your child is freaking out about something big or small, that is NOT the time to try to reason with them. Validate their feelings at the moment (that does NOT mean give them whatever they want), help and/or let them calm down, and then ask them to talk through everything that happened, just like they’re telling a story. Have them tell you the beginning, middle, and end and what they learned from it. See our children’s brains are not fully developed and won’t be for a long time (think mid-20’s – GASP!) which includes the connectivity between the two hemispheres. When you help tie a child’s emotional response to a rational (and verbal) response, you help them develop their brain in a way that honors their emotions but also increases their rationality.
        4. Talk about feelings. Your kid doesn’t show up in the world knowing when they are sad, scared, angry, or worried. YOU have to teach them that. The only way to have empathy—an understanding and acceptance of another’s feelings—is by having an understanding and acceptance of your own feelings. This means you need to know what the heck you’re feeling! There are subtle differences between sadness and grief. Anger and frustration. Anxiety and fear. Help your child start to learn those things and tease them apart by labeling and talking about feelings. Share your own feelings. Take a guess at what they’re feeling and believe them when they say it’s not that. When you read books or watch movies together, encourage them to speculate on how the characters are feeling or what they are thinking. All of these things encourage 1) feeling identification and 2) perspective taking both of which are required for empathy.

 

Interviews: Dr. Colleen Cira

Dr. Colleen Cira, PsyD, received both her Masters and Doctorate from The Illinois School of Professional Psychology and is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in the State of Illinois.  She’s the Founder and Executive Director of Cira Center for Behavioral Health, PC, a boutique group practice specializing in Women and Trauma with locations in Chicago and Oak Park.

She was named one of the “Top 100 Women in Chicago Making a Difference,” by Today’s Chicago Woman. Dr. Cira is a trauma and anxiety expert, clinical supervisor, writer, speaker, consultant, activist, wife, and Mommy to two little ones.

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Workplace Issues Surrounding ‘Dear White Staffers’ & Those Seeking to Unionize Capitol Hill

Available for Interviews: Dara Barlin

Dara Barlin is the Founder & CEO of the Center for Transforming Culture and the author of the new book, A New Kind of Power: Using Human-Centered Leadership to Drive Innovation, Equity, and Belonging in Government Institutions.

What Dara Barlin Can say in an interview on the
How to Bring About Positive Change in Government Workplace:

New Book Provides Roadmap for
How to Transform Culture in Government

Staffer efforts to expose the toxic culture in Congress are gaining steam, as President Biden endorses the movement to unionize aides on the Hill and the IG account ‘Dear White Staffers’ builds wide-scale support. Leaders of the efforts say they are pushing back against an environment where staffers feel unappreciated, don’t feel safe speaking their truth, and suffer through biased and abusive boss behaviors—all for disproportionately low salaries.

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How to Solve the Labor Shortage Problem

Available for Interviews: Dara Barlin

Dara Barlin is the Founder & CEO of the Center for Transforming Culture and the author of the new book, A New Kind of Power: Using Human-Centered Leadership to Drive Innovation, Equity, and Belonging in Government Institutions.

What Dara Barlin Can say in an interview on
How to Solve the Labor Shortage Problem:

Approximately 4.3 million jobs are going unfilled in the U.S. and the labor shortage is wreaking havoc on supply chains and crippling some industries. Researchers have been scratching their heads trying to come up with the root causes, yet there is one factor that has been largely ignored while being the most consistent determinant of people quitting—terrible workplace culture. Reports show 79% of employees that leave their jobs do so because they didn’t feel appreciated, while another study reveals 58% of people trust strangers more than their own boss. The factors of the pandemic have simply been exacerbating a trend already in place: people tend to leave their job when they are fed up with the level of disrespect they receive at work.

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