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Put Them In The Positive Emotional State and They Will Learn Anything Faster Than You Could Imagine
Learning has a direct relationship with emotion. The state a child is in when a teacher is trying to teach him or her will determine whether or not learning will take place.
We all learn better and faster when we feel positive emotions like happiness, joy, motivation, and peace. Even at work, we are at our best when we are happy, excited, and full of joy.
No significant learning can take place when a learner is in a negative emotional state like fear, anxiety, boredom, fatigue, tiredness, etc.
What do most teachers do when they come to classes? Rather than lifting the spirit and the emotion of the learners, they will coerce and frighten them. That is one major reason most children find it difficult to learn during class teaching.
Learning cannot take place when learners are bored because boredom is a negative emotion. Fatigue, tiredness, and lethargy are all emotional states that prevent learning to take place.
When learners are in those negative emotional states, a teacher should first try to move them from the negative emotional state to a positive state before he begins to teach.
How To Help Them Snap Out of Negative Emotional State
There is a direct relationship between our physiology (body postures) and psychology. Our body posture is a reflection of our emotional state.
Teachers should be very good at taking nonverbal clues from the body postures of their learners in order to know the emotional states they are in.
Let me show you some important things about physiology and psychology here. I want you to see how our physiology affects our neurology. Let's take an example of a child that's in a depressed state. What would his physiology be like? The posture would probably be slouched. The eyes would be downward-looking, the breathing would be slow and shallow. The facial muscles would be drooping and the tone of voice low and soft, even barely audible.
Now, what if the child is in a state of total excitement? The physiology would be completely different, wouldn’t it? The posture and shoulders would be upright, the eyes would be wide open and more focused, the breathing would be faster and deeper, the facial muscles would be firm and the voice would be much louder and he will speak in a higher pitch!
You see, as human beings, every state we experience has a specific physiology associated with it. Today's teachers must know how to study all these to ensure the learners are ready to learn.
Where it's observed that the learners are in a negative emotional state, the teacher can help them snap out of the negative states by altering their physiology (by simply asking them to shift their body posture from that of a negative emotional state to that of a positive emotional state).
In other words, before a child can feel bored, he must shift his physiology into a bored one. To change this negative state to a positive emotion of being excited, he needs to shift his physiology into an excitement format.
Can a learner feel bored if he was in a physiology of excitement? Of course not! It is impossible because the brain and body are neurologically linked. When you shift your physiology, you automatically shift your mind and your emotional state.
The second way to help them snap out of negative emotional states is to work on their internal representation. Simply put, their internal representation is their self-talk. Their brain is like a supercomputer, their self-talk is the operating system that directs what the brain can or not do.
How Can We Help Them?
Let them recite some short but powerful affirmations that will fire them up and silence some negative self-talk before you begin to teach them. Also, take time to motivate and inspire them before you begin to teach a lesson. The use of games and experiential teaching methods will not only alter their physiology but also change their self-talk.
Learners can learn faster and recall better if they are in positive emotional states when they were taught. All efforts should be made to ensure they are in a positive emotional state during teaching.
Hope you gained some insights.
Sincerely yours,
BIODUN OMOSAKU PhD
Cognitive Psychologist
Brain Coach
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