Emotional Literacy : the most overlooked aspect of adult education

As a 16 year adult education instructor and consultant, I've found  that many adult education  organizations or programs neglect one of the most important aspects of  assisting adult learners:   "Helping them learn how to manage and  control their emotions".   Many of you will agree that adult learners carry past baggage and hurt  that limits their abilities  to accept themselves and others.  If we are to impact the lives of these types of learners we must begin with an investigation of who they are as people then help them understand  the relationship of emotions to their learning.

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At the organization I teach at, we just piloted a curriculum from the University of Missouri called "Tackling the Tough Skills", since, as you mention, we wanted to work on skills beyond academics. It focuses on five major areas (though, due to time restraints, we had difficulty getting through all five): Attitude, Responsibility, Communication, Decision Making, and Workplace Skills. Initial feedback from our students has been positive. Several students have expressed that they are better able to keep their emotions in check (and they have experiences and anecdotes to back this up). It's an interesting curriculum that you can adapt to whatever student population you are working with. We'll be teaching it again in the fall, and are looking to change things up a bit, as well as try to integrate parts of the curriculum into all our academic classes. Here's a link to the program to learn more about it: http://extension.missouri.edu/tough-life-skills/

Please let me know if you have any questions about the program! If anyone else has used this program, I'd love to hear your thoughts, too!