I. Instructional Objectives
    A. Arizona Arts Standard 1: Creating Art
        1. In groups, create scenarios that develop tension and suspense between believable
            characters.
        2. Demonstrate mental and physical attributes required to communicate characters different
            from themselves.
        3. Cooperate in an ensemble to rehearse and present improvisations involving themselves
            as invented characters
    B. Teaching Goals
        1. Provide students with challenge of turning abstract ideas into a symbolic dramatic
            performance.
        2. Practice collaborative skills, working in a group to create an improvised scene.
    3. Reinforce cognitve grasp of Goleman~s concepts by converting them into dramatic
        performance.

II. Resources / Materials
    A. Copies of concepts taken from Goleman's chapters 3-8
    B. List of class members / groups
    C. Optional: various pieces of colorful flowing fabric, musical instruments

III. Focus I Anticipatory Set:
    Written on the Board:
        Self-Awareness
        Self-Management
        Self-Motivation
        Social Skills

IV. Teaching Procedures and Student Activities
    A. Announce to the class that they have been chosen as the troupe of actors responsible for demonstrating the domains of emotional intelligence to a national convention of educators interested in the study of emotional intelligence. None of the audience members have read the text. However, many of them are eager to quickly grasp a general understanding of emotional intelligence. 75 percent of the educators at the conference work in inner city schools. They have read journal articles about emotional intelligence, but the articles were written by scientists who could not get beyond the restrictive and cold jargon of facts/figures/statistics. Most of these educators are in desperate need  ways to reach and teach the very volatile, emotionally fragile, needy children that fill their classrooms. Because of your status as graduate students, skilled at improv, you have been chosen to SHOW these teachers the elements of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-motivation, self-discipline and social skills.
    B. Announce groups.
    C. Hand out sheets which are notes taken on the four elements from the chapters in
        Goleman's text. Purpose of the sheets is to help each group quickly find a focus, rather
        than looking through the many pages of the text. Excerpts are selected for their imagery
        possibilities.
    D. Allow groups 15 minutes to prepare their scenes.
    E. Groups present scenes, announcing the emotional intelligence element as their title.
    F. After all groups have performed, actors may ask questions of other groups. The goal is
        to collaborate so that the very best and most dramatic of scenes can be created for the
        teacher convention.
    G. Perhaps in sync with post-scene discussion, conversation can range to topics addressed
         in chapters.

V. Closure I Assessment:
    Exit slip upon which each actor describes his/her understanding of the four elements of emotional intelligence as addressed in the scenes and text. (There are really five domains: self-awareness, management of emotions, self motivation, development of empathy and management of social relationships, which I converted into four categories as named above.)
 

                                                Emotional Intelligence Domain:
                                    Knowing One's Emotions: Self-Awareness

    Self-awareness - recognizing a feeling as it happens - is the keystone of emotional intelligence. The ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take (43).

    Self-awareness is not an attention that gets carried away by emotions, overreacting and amplifying what is perceived. Rather, it is a neutral mode that maintains self-reflectiveness even amidst turbulent emotions (47).

    Self-awareness..."is like being accompanied by a second self- a wraithlike observer who, not sharin~he dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles't (qtd from William Stryon 47).

Self-awareness is being "aware of both our mood and our thoughts about that mood" (qtd from John Mayer 47).

    Self- awareness can be a non-reactive non judgmental attention to our inner states. (47)
 
 

                                    Emotional Intelligence Domain: Self-Discipline

    "Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy "(qtd from Aristotle ix).

    A sense of self-mastery, of being able to withstand the emotional storms that the buffeting of Fortune brings rather than being "passion 5 slave," has been praised a virtue since the time of Plato. The ancient Greek word for it was sophosyne, "care and inteHigence in conducting one's life; a tempered balance and wisdom" (56).

    Keeping our distressing emotions in check is the key to emotional well being; extreme emotions that wax too intensely or for too long- undermine our stability. (56).

    Downs as well as ups spice life, but need to be in balance. In the calculus of the heart it is the ratio of positive to negative emotions that determines the sense of weH-being
(57).

    Managing our emotions is something of a full-time job: much of what we do -especially in our free time - is an attempt to manage mood (57).

    Anger is energizing, even exhilarating. Anger's seductive, persuasive power may in itself explain why some views of it are so common: that anger is uncontrollable, or that, at any rate, it should not be ~ontrolled, and that venting anger in "catharsis" is all to the good.. .A careful reading of research findings suggests that all these common attitudes toward anger are misguided, if not outright myths...The train of angry thoughts that stokes anger is also potentially the key to one of the most powerful ways to defuse anger: undermining the convictions that are fueling the anger in the first place. The longer we ruminate about what has made us angry, the more "good reasons" and self-justifications for being angry we can invent. Brooding fuels anger's flames. But seeing things differently douses those flames (60).

    People are so much more prone to anger if they have already been provoked or slightly irritated by something else (60).

    Anger builds on anger; the emotional brain heats up. By then rage, unhampered by reason, erupts in violence (61).

    People in a state of rage are unforgiving and beyond being reasoned with; their thoughts revolve around revenge and reprisal, oblivious to what the consequences may be.
This high level of excitation "fosters an illusion of power and invulnerability that may inspire and facilitate aggression" (62).

    One way of defusing anger is to seize on and challenge the thoughts that trigger the
surges of anger, since it is the original appraisal of an interaction that confirms and encourages the first burst of anger, and the subsequent reappraisals that fan the flame. Timing matters; the earlier in the anger cycle the more effective. Anger can be completely short-circuited if the mitigating information comes before anger is acted on (62).

    A second way of de-escalating anger is to take a cooling down time-out. The angered person can put the brakes on the cycle of escalating hostile by seeking out distractions - getting away, going for a drive, taking a walk, actively exercise (63).

    Ventilating anger is one of the worst ways to cool down; outbursts of rage typically pump up the emotional brain's arousal, leaving people feeling more angry, not less.
One of the most potent antidotes to depression is seeing things differently, or cognitive reframing. Another is to help others in need (74).
 

                                    Emotional Intelligence Doiwun: Self-Motivation

    People with high levels of hope share certain traits, among them being able to motivate themselves, feeling resourceful enough to find ways to accomplish their objectives, reassuring themselves when in a tight spot that things will get better, being flexi~e enough to find different ways to get to their goals or to switch goals if one becomes impossible, and having the sense to break down a formidable task into smaller, manageable pieces (87).

     From the perspective of emotional intelligence, having hope means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks. Indeed, people who are hopeful evidence less depression than others as they maneuver through life in pursuit of their goals, are less anxious in general, and have fewer emotional distresses (87).

    Being able to enter flow is emotional intelligence at its best; flow represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service t)f performance and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression~or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow...The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture...it is intrinsically rewarding...a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they are doing, paying attention tQ the task, their awareness merged with their actions. ..Attention becomes so focused that people are aware only of the narrow range of perception related to the immediate task, losing track of time and space" (91).

    Flow is a state of self-forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry: instead of being lost in nervous preoccupation, people in flow are so absorbed in the task at hand that they lose all self-consciousness, dropping the small preoccupations of daily life.. People in flow exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, their responses perfectly attuned to the changing demands of the task. And although people perform at their peak while in flow, they are unconcerned with how they are doing, with thoughts of success or failure-the sheer pleasure of the act itself is what motivates the (91).

    There are several ways to enter flow. One is to intentionally focus sharp attention on the task at hand. Entry into flow can also occur when people find a task they are skilled at and engage in itat a level that slightly taxes their ability (91).

    The spontaneous pleasure, grace, and effectiveness that characterize flow are incompatible with emotional hijackings...The quality of attention in flow is relaxed yet highly focused. Flow is a state devoid of emotional static, save for a compelling, highly motivating felling of mild ecstasy (92).

    Watching someone in flow gives the impression that the difficult is easy, peak performance appears natural and ordinary (92).
 

                                                Emotional Intelligence Domains:
                                                                Social Skills

    Empathy builds on self-awareness; the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings (96).

    The key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels: tone of  voice, gesture, facial expression (96).

    Empathy requires enough calm and receptivity so that the subde signals of feeling from another person can be received and mimicked by one's own emotional brain (104).

    To feel with another is to care (105).

    Roots of morality are to be found in empathy . ..The same capacity for empathic affect, for putting oneself in another's place, leads people to follow certain moral principles. (105).

    We send emotional signals in every encounter and those signals affect those we are with. The more adroit we are socially, the better we control the signals we send..(l 15).

    We are all part of each other's tool kit for emotional change, for better or for worse (115).

    If we are adept at attuning to people's moods, or can easily bring others under the sway of our own, then interactions will go more smoothly at the emotional level (117).

    Interpersonal abilities - organizing groups, negotiating solutions, personal connection and social analysis - build on other emotional intelligences. People who make an excellent social impression, are keenly attuned to the ways others are reacting, and so are able to continually fine-tune their social performance, adjusting it. to make sure they are having the desired effect...However, if these interpersonal abilities are not balanced by an astute sense of one's own needs and feelings and how to fulfill them, they can lead to a hollow social success, a popularity won at the cost of onets own true satisfaction. (119).
                                                                                         Created by Barbara Jo Maier