To start off with, we’re going to get the ball starting in the middle of the screen, which is at co-ordinates, (0, 0). Next, we’re going to choose a random angle to start the ball moving. I’m creating a broadcast called <goBall>, which essentially moves the ball until it hits off a bat. We’ll start off by doing this with just the player’s bat before we go with the opponent’s bat.

Basically, the ball keeps moving at a variable speed, which we’ll set at the start to 5 and call it <ballSpeed>. We’ll keep this going, for the moment, with the command <repeat until touches <player>>.  We also add a command <if on edge, bounce>, which is a very useful command that does exactly what it says it does. If we didn’t have this command in Scratch, we’d be using complicated trigonometry that even secondary school students would struggle with! (atan anyone?)

Once the ball touches off our bat, (<player>), it sets off the commands below.

We set the angle to be any angle between -60 and 60 degrees. The reason for this is so that the ball now moves upwards on the screen but at a reasonable angle – not too wide! If you fancy being very clever, you might set the angle to be dependent on where on the bat the ball hits but this would involve very complex programming! If you’ve done it, let me know and I’ll share the code. When it changes the direction of the bat, it’s time to <goBall> again.

In the next session, we’ll add to the code so the computer bat starts moving and we’ll get the ball to bounce off that!

 We are now onto the fourth of the Intrapersonal realm of emotional intelligent competencies. We have covered self actualisation, assertiveness, emotional self-awareness and now to self regards.

Stein and Book define self regard as

The ability to respect and accept yourself as basically good. Respecting yourself is basically liking yourself. It is the ability to appreciate  your perceived positive aspects and possibilities as well as accepting your negative aspects and limitations and still feel good about yourself.

It is about knowing your strengths and weaknesses and liking yourself, warts and all. It is associated with general feelings of security, inner strength, self confidence and self adequacy. Individuals with good self regards have no problem admitting when they are wrong or have made a mistake or even that they do not know all of the answers.

At the opposite end of this continuum are personal inadequacy and inferiority.

Self regard is very different from esteem or confidence. Self regard is inside of you while confidence is what you see on the outside. A person can seem highly confident but dying with self esteem inside. I am sure this makes sense and you know someone like this!

Everyone wants to feel good about themselves, the world is saturated with books, dvds and tv that all aim to help and develop self regard. But, if we put too much emphasis on pumping up our self esteem, it can cause things to go wrong. Simply by telling yourself that you are great can be an approach to repairing a broken ego but it is not the final and only way.

There has been a huge amount of research into self esteem and looking at children that have developed emotional and behavioural issues because of lack of self esteem but while low self esteem can lead to dysfunctional relationships then high self esteem can too.

If we teach our children that they are special, like a phrase or mantra without helping them build skills then this is no good. What happens when the world doesn’t ladle out praise? How will the child cope?

Real self esteem is build up bit by bit, taking real pride in accomplishments and not through an outsider who heaps unrealistic positivity onto the child.

The idea is to like yourself with your strengths and your weaknesses, without slanting too far to either.

When helping children to set goals, we need to think about their self regard too. What this means is that we need to be aware of our limitations, strengths and weaknesses. If we can acknowledge our weaknesses, we can work super well on a team or we can ask for help in the area we are not so good at or work to improve that area.

Bill Gates, the world’s richest self made billionaire could be seen as having high self regard. Mike Sax, a friend of his said that:

“Gates can appear cocky..but he doesn’t have too much ego to acknowledge that there are people who knows more about specific topics than he does. He is smart enough to surround himself with people who know about technology, business and marketing.”

Clever.

So, the better you know and capitalise on your strengths, the more confident you will be in your short and long term interactions. Build on your strengths but don’t overcapitalise on them either. Really successful people know what they are not good at. They decide on whether they will improve at those areas or surround themselves with people who are brilliant in those areas. An integral part of success is being aware of your limitations and knowing how you will deal with them. This requires self awareness, which we have spoken about previously.

Self Assessment

I have adapted a questionnaire from The EQ Edge workbook. Answer these questions over the next week, keep a notebook for this.

1. How much do you like yourself?
2. What are your greatest strengths? (e.g. loyalty, sense of humour, honesty)
3. What are your greatest weaknesses? (bad with money, cannot listen to people)
4. What is your greatest single strength?
5. How has this helped you in life?
6. How can you improve on this strength?
7. How can you use it to achieve more of your goals at home, work, school or with others?
8. What is your most serious weakness?
9. How has this hurt you in the past?
10. Have you tried to do anything about this? With what results?
11. How would improving this help you at work, home or with others?
12. How could you begin to effect change in this area?

Have a look back at number one and set a goal about how you would like to feel about yourself. Write it down in that notebook! Write down the good things about feeling good about yourself.

To reality test your awareness, ask others about your personal strengths. Choose people you are close to.

You can also set goals for your biggest weakness, giving yourself a course of action to follow.

Next week, we will delve into the SPHE curriculum and ascertain how full of self regard it is. Until then, give some of these activities a go.

The bats are going to be thick straight lines and the ball is going to be a small circle. I’m going to create a few power-ups: one that slows down the ball, one that speeds it up, one that extends the size of the bat, another that shrinks it and one that makes the ball bigger. I’m only going to use one sprite for all five power ups and I’ll be using colour to decide what happens.

Two other sprites that we’re going to be created are the “goals.” They are going to be invisible lines that go across the length of the screen. You can download all the sprites here.

In order to move our sprite, we do our usual code. Thankfully, the sprite only moves in 2 directions: left and right. You can see the code below but you should be able to figure this out.

How about inventing your own power ups? What kinds of ideas could you come up with? How about splitting the ball in three? How about giving you a bonus point if you hit the power up? In the next section, we’re going to get the ball moving around the screen. We won’t bother scoring points yet but I do want the ball to bounce off the walls (easy!) and the bats (not so easy!)

We saw that assertiveness as a skill needs a bit more thought and work in my last post. The SPHE curriculum has some connections with assertiveness and it would be easier for me to make those connections but the SPHE curriculum should encompass all of the EI skills to be a truly EI curriculum. It loses some points for this though makes up for it in 5th and 6th Class. In fairness, teaching assertiveness would be a pointless exercise from Junior-1st Class but after these classes, the children are well able to understand and use these skills.

Knowing how to defend yourself and respect others is especially relevant when it comes to bullying. So, bear this in mind as a key to a happy school life for you and the students in your class! It is so important to get right! And it all comes back to self-esteem, which I will be speaking about as a separate skill later on.

In the passive style, all the world is allowed on stage but for you — your role is to be the audience and supporter for everyone else. In the aggressive style, you’re allowed on stage but you spend most of your time shoving the others off, like in a lifelong sumo match. With the assertive style, everyone is welcome onstage. You are entitled to be a full person, including your uniqueness, and so are others. (Paterson)

Activties

To truly capitalise on the SPHE curriculum and assertiveness within, we need to recap on the definition of assertiveness. It is made up of 3 parts-ability to express feelings, express beliefs and  thoughts openly and standing up for rights. It is not being aggressive or being passive or passive-aggressive. It is about resolution of a conflict. It is also not compromise, which is different than resolving for both parties, a win win.

“Assertiveness involves recognizing and standing up for our own rights, while at the same time recognizing and respecting the rights of others.” http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/raising-assertive-kids/

First, the teacher needs to understand what assertive looks like. So do the children, define what the words mean.

Role play

Role play with the children. Make examples of passiveness, aggressiveness, passive-aggressiveness and help the children label them as so. Get the childrne to role play potential conflict situations.

For example, give them a scenario like this. A child has received a C in a test. She is afraid to say anything to the teacher and complains to her friends about the teacher, calling the teacher a rude name. Now, ask the children to label that behaviour. Is it passive, passive-aggressive or aggressive? Now, get the children to act out an assertive way of dealing with this, helping them along the way.

Model

Children look to adults for model behaviour. You as the adult they work with every day needs to model assertive behaviour. Work on this personal skill for yourself.

Start really small. Try to be assertive in slightly stressful situations, like asking a waiter if you can get a better place to sit or sending bread back because it doesn’t taste completely fresh. Then, work up to harder situations like speaking to your partner about communication issues! Remember, respect your rights to express an opinion but also respect the waiter’s feelings.

Start saying no. Assertive people say no. It is important to set boundaries in your life or you become completely passive and stressed. Use the kick to touch approach, where if a person comes up with a new job or idea for you to take on, kick it to touch Say “Oh, thanks for thinking of me, leave it with, I will let you know tomorrow” and then get back to them with a no or yes. It puts you back in control of your feelings and decisions, making you more assertive.

It is hard to be assertive

Say what you want. Express yourself. Be clear, honest and respectful. Some people think “I am honest and to the point, I say it like it is” That is called aggression! You need to be assertive, which is saying it as it is but also think about the other people and their feelings. Empathising with them.

Using “I” statements always work well. It makes people less defensive. Focus on what is wrong, don’t side step around issues in the workplace or home. If you are annoyed that a colleague said something cutting to you, you have the choice to react and be assertive or to ignore. You don’t always have to be the one speaking up but what you don’t want it a situation where you ignored your colleague’s comment and then take it out in a passive or aggressive way, opening up more conflict.

Have a look into more research on assertiveness In addition to Paterson’sThe Assertiveness Workbook, Marter recommended Your Perfect Right: Assertiveness and Equality in Your Life and Relationships (9th Edition) by Robert E. Alberti and Michael L. Emmons and Assertiveness: How to Stand Up for Yourself and Still Win the Respect of Others by Judy Murphy.

Being assertive will help you as a teacher and person but also your students will watch your behaviour and copy it. Some extra role plays and drama activities will add to this important skill-building in the classroom.

Here are some good videos on examples on assertiveness on you tube. 

photo credit: albertogp123 via photopin cc

For those of you reading from outside the Irish primary school sector, we have to test children in Literacy and Numeracy in 2nd, 4th and 6th class. They receive a score out of ten called a STEN (which I believe stands for score out of ten, seriously!) A score of 5 in considered average and whatever level of schooling you are at, you’d be hoping that your class will achieve an average STEN of 5. A child who cannot read is almost guaranteed to score a STEN of 1 in both literacy and numeracy.

Judging from this week’s Sunday Times Best Schools in Ireland supplement, it appears that the best schools achieve the highest number of points in the Leaving Cert. At primary school, we didn’t have points but now we do. Therefore, I believe we are one journalist away from judging primary schools on the same basis as they do secondary schools. Rightly or wrongly, OK just wrongly, success at second level is judged by the number of points one achieves. At primary level, so far, it is much more holistic. These standardised tests do not test very much, in the same way the Leaving Cert mainly measures memory. Literacy tests after 2nd class tend to be cloze tests, which only test a very small part of literacy. The numeracy tests test the number strand, again only a part of the full mathematical range.

It’s astonishing that anyone can state that a successful school is one that achieves higher STENs than others. There are many factors that make a school successful – I would say the same factors that makes a successful society. After all, aren’t schools supposed to be micro-societies? How do we measure relationships, governance, levels of diversity and so on? What makes a successful classroom? It can’t only be the results in two tests – classroom design, teacher planning, relationships, democracy, etc. must also form part of a good assessment.

Internationally, it seems that standardised testing is being equated with the quality of the teacher. Therefore, if you happen to teaching in a with high-achieving students, you will automatically be considered a fantastic teacher because, without doing anything, you will automatically have students achieving STENs that are above average. However, if you happen to teach in a school where this isn’t the case, you are automatically designated a worse teacher than your colleague in the first school.

I’m surprised that last year’s results haven’t been picked up yet by a newspaper and converted to some form of league table and unless the government come up with some sort of plan as to what to do with these results, it’s inevitable that it will be used badly. I’m hoping that schools who have lower results will be given opportunities to liaise with training agencies or to have extra support. However, I’m pretty sure they will use the results to cut funding. That or do nothing.