Emotional literacy; a prerequisite for nurturing potential in students.

Engaging students is a key predictor of academic performance which requires a high level of emotional literacy from the part of teachers. Without it, a teacher may not be able to effectively  nurture to maturity the potential in them. An emotionally literate teacher is keen to give the students a high level of attention all through the learning process.

 He or she will devise appropriate strategies that will help them understand the behavior of these students and how best to engage them adequately in order to improve their academic performance. This is simply because without student engagement, there will be no learning. A teacher is one of the most powerful forces that can influence lives within our society. It is therefore necessary that a teacher adequately prepares and develops himself or herself for the learning journey on which he or she is taking the students.

Every teacher must know that each student  has a seed of greatness resident on the inside… Prof. Olumide Longe, Catalyst 2019. This simply implies that it is the duty of the teacher to empower the student to take flight and excel. This, in essence, is what makes great teachers.

 How else can a teacher achieve this without being emotionally literate? A teacher must also be motivated inorder to motivate others.

This fact gives rise to some of the questions a teacher critically needs to ponder on; for instance, Who am I when coming to meet students in class ? How do I see the pupils I am coming to teach?

This is because every student has greatness lying within. The teacher might not realize that so, there is a greater need for teachers to employ emotional literacy while teaching, it is beyond their ‘book intelligence’. 

A teacher must be intentional about creating a conducive learning environment for their students to absorb knowledge and develop skills for the future.