message
Lamplighter 2
H E A D
O F
S C H O O L ’ S
M E S S A G E
Being Somebody Who Makes Everybody Feel Like Somebody As I am writing this message, it is a few days before our hotly contested national election. The coronavirus is raging across America and many parts of the globe, and the critical implications of the world’s climate crisis and our country’s racial reckoning are growing more evident every day. Emotions are running high, and it feels like everyone needs to take several In his influential book Emotional Intelligence: very deep breaths and get a grip before 2020, Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, the author this memorable year, comes to an end. Dan Goleman wrote, "Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. Often in the last few months, I have thought When we focus on ourselves, our world about an article I read last March in the contracts as our problems and preoccupations Harvard Business Review. It was called “That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.” Drawing on loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross about the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, stages of grief and loss, the article’s author Scott Berinato describes the uncertainties many and we increase our capacity for connection— or compassionate action." people have been feeling about the future. He calls this “anticipatory grief” and suggests that This issue of the Lamplighter includes several naming such emotions is the first step in feature articles about SEL, or “social and managing them. emotional learning,” which the WSJ columnist Julie Jargon defines as “the process by which children learn to understand and manage feelings, develop empathy for others and acquire problemsolving skills.” She says that, because of the combination of pandemic and distance learning, SEL has never been more important or more difficult. Faculty at Allen-Stevenson have been using the framework from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to help students develop healthy identities, manage emotions and make responsible
Mr. Trower greeting boys as they arrive at school
