Self-Awaremess & Empowerment curriculum

Our world and educational systems do not offer emotional education.  While we teach children about external reality, the emotional inner reality that drives their behavior and determines their well-being is ignored, other than to be met with punishment when they do not know how to handle what is stirred up in them.

EQ - emotional awareness - determines the quality of a person's life, and yet is addressed nowhere unless a person is deemed to have a "mental health" condition requiring "therapy."

We can offer the emotional education therapy provides to everyone in school, rather than waiting for suffering to occur.

EQ – emotional intelligence – has long been recognized as more important than IQ.  This curriculum can raise the consciousness of our children and therefore of the world.

My curriculum addresses children's mental health.  People everywhere suffer from an ignorance about their own emotional state that distorts their understanding of themselves and limits the potential of living a full and satisfying life.  This issue is universal, as can be seen by the widespread violence and misery in our world.  Ignorance that limits a child's ability to learn and apply logic.  Emotions are more powerful than logic.  If our children are educated about how to appropriately deal with their emotions intrapsychically and in relationship, logic will then be able to have more impact on life decisions.

Our world and educational systems do not offer emotional education.  While we teach children about external reality, the emotional inner reality that drives their behavior and determines their well-being is ignored, other than to be met with punishment when they do not know how to handle what is stirred up in them.

This curriculum integrates psychological self-awareness into education.  It was successfully piloted in high school health classes and in 5 men's medium security prisons.  It fosters self-reflection, self-esteem,  the identification and expression of feelings and understanding and acceptance of both self and others.  Exercises and discussions teach concepts that will be immediately applicable as well as helpful and liberating to children for the rest of their lives.   

The curriculum is simple, clear and accompanied by a book, Love Now ~ Untangling Relationships, making the core concepts easily understood by the teacher, who need not be trained in psychology. 

The curriculum is designed to help children feel empowered, making order out of the chaos of their emotions.   When children "act out" the feelings they cannot incorporate or express, we have not known what to do except punish them.  

Emotional education is a viable, long-term approach to equip our children to face life in an increasingly challenging world.  It provides a way of reaching children, while they are still young, to: 

1.  educate them about their feelings and appropriate tools to manage and express those feelings

2.  identify children who have deeper struggles so they can be referred for more intensive help.  

I believe the Self-Awaremess & Empowerment curriculum can advance human consciousness, and the inner peace and personal empowerment of children.  I am hoping that with the support and endorsement of Solve, more schools will want to offer this curriculum to their students.  

Our society is experiencing a horrifying increase of anger and violent acts.  We do not yet have the ability to identify people who have no positive ways to express and resolve feelings, which, if ignored, can escalate into violence against themselves or others.  People who would gladly help, feel lost as to how to help.

EQ - emotional awareness - determines the quality of a person's life, and yet is addressed nowhere unless a person is deemed to have a "mental health" condition requiring "therapy."  We can offer the emotional education therapy provides to everyone in school, rather than waiting for suffering to occur.The curriculum easily can be introduced into high schools, prisons and eventually into elementary schools.

As this information becomes more accessible to children, school environments will also be affected, with everyone's ability to communicate and solve problems enhanced with this self-understanding and common language of emotions. 

The pilot classes experienced an integration of disparate sub-groups that the teachers had never seen before, as the students were drawn together by their common humanness.

The Self-Awaremess & Empowerment curriculum is designed to ensure the mental health of children as they prepare to enter the world as independent adults.  Equipped with self-knowledge and the language and tools of emotional awareness, they will be better able to create solid lives free of emotional blocks to success.

The curriculum crosses cultural, societal, philosophical and gender differences to address the core existential conditions of being human.  It is designed to strengthen participants’ personal power and increase a conscious healthy emotional foundation.  

This curriculum has been offered at an Oregon high school for seven years.   Started as a pilot program, it was so successful that it has been continued as a regular part of the school curriculum.  Classes experience an integration of disparate sub-groups - ethnic, gender, racial and interest divides disappear as  students are drawn together by the common issues of being human.  Bullying, abuse and molestation kept shamefully hidden have been revealed during the course of this curriculum.  

The curriculum is also offered to inmates at five men’s medium security prisons.  One warden told me, “This is changing the culture of the whole prison.” 

The curriculum was just offered to the most difficult group in the prison population - 18 and 19 year old boys, gang members who are under extreme pressure to remain “cool,” tough and untouchable. These boys responded with such profound changes that the facilitators were astonished.  

The vocational choice of one man has influenced how we in the entire Western world look at ourselves.  If Freud had not been physician, but had been a teacher, there would be no such thing as “mental illness.”  His curiosity and introspection would have still have led him to contemplate the human psyche but would most likely have resulted in classes to explore human emotions.  Emotional ignorance vs. emotional self-knowledge would have simply been a course of study, rather than today's "problem" of mental "illness” and mental “health."

This solution transforms problems into challenges, eliminating judgement and shame, and allowing people to learn about their inner emotional world with curiosity and compassion.  This approach will change how people look at themselves and each other.

Prisoners in five prisons and students at one high school.  The Nashville School District is preparing to offer it in their schools, as well.

2 part time team members

I am a clinical psychologist, in practice for 43 years.  I have taught at UCLA extension and Southern Oregon University.  I co-authored the book Love Now ~ Untangling Relationships.  Before getting my doctorate, I worked with children as a YMCA program director.  I am the one reaching out to schools.  My business partner reaches out to prisons.

I am guided by my deep connection to my clients and by my understanding of the human process of change.

I would welcome anyone who would want to work on this project!  The prisoners were primarily black. They are eager to provide this curriculum to others in their community.

My solution is well developed.  All that I need is assistance in marketing it to potential groups/schools.