EMPOWERMENT & EMPATHY: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Our innovative Emotional Intelligence curriculum sets us apart from other schools. These daily classes allow students to focus on their potential for emotional development, understanding of psychology, mindfulness, growth mindset, and resilience. Teaching metacognition, or “thinking about thinking,” through the cultivation of mindfulness, promotes students to become confident, passionate, and engaged adults. Their introspection and subsequent fostering of natural talents is key to giving young people an optimistic vision about the future, directly leading to motivated success and the abilities to direct, then sustain, capability in their chosen fields.
More than 90% of students admitted to Middlebridge are strengthening working memory, public speaking skills, adaptability, and empathy. Middlebridge students are complicated learners, so we encourage candid discussions of mental health to de-stigmatize challenges, to universalize human struggle, and to transform adversity into strength. Our students have multiple intelligences, social strengths, and emotional intuitions; self-realization contributes to a balanced personal, academic, and professional life. Emotional Intelligence classes happen daily, utilizing real-time feedback, role-playing, improvisational theater, mindfulness and meditation techniques, and reflexive exercises to align with a student’s individual goals and needs. The curriculum goals are implemented in a customized manner on a four to six week basis. Each unit is designed to give students a supportive space in which to practice communication development, increasing self-esteem, goal-setting, and developing values and identity to understand and label feelings and emotions. These exercises positively inform interpersonal skills, leading to healthy relationships and satisfying careers. It also nurtures post-secondary transitions, where focus is not just on college placement, but on the support needed to segue from our intimate environment to larger college campuses.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE CURRICULUM ADDRESSES:
Emotional Intelligence:
Understanding emotions; managing anger and stress; navigating nuanced emotional territory; gaining perspective; empathy; self-esteem.
Communication:
Improving conversational skills; active listening; context and setting awareness; encouraging self-disclosure.
Interpersonal Relationships:
Making friends and maintaining meaningful friendships; understanding boundaries; appropriate conversation; building trust; healthy dating behavior.
Self-Advocacy:
Recognizing need and asking for help; building support communities.
Learning Style:
Understanding multiple intelligences; identifying learning styles; academic and social impact of learning differences.
Social Media:
Setting boundaries; personal security; appropriate use; trusting and privacy ethics; cause and effect.
Physical Health:
Wellness routines; self-care and nutrition; stress management.
Mindfulness:
Meditation as a coping strategy; gaining presence in focused situations; physical awareness for stress management; recognizing stress and anxiety cues; constructive reactions to stressors.
Career Awareness and Exploration:
Matching personal values, interests, skill set, and expectations with career planning.
Post-Secondary Transition Process:
Assistance, preparation, and support in post-secondary placement (for seniors and postgraduate students).
Our collaboration with the Contemporary Theater Company in Wakefield, Rhode Island, is one of the most popular aspects of our Emotional Intelligence curriculum. Improvisation classes are proven to be a cutting-edge method for strengthening working memory, public speaking skills, adaptability, and empathy. Situational exercises, like role-playing, are excellent, therapeutic ways to practice “holding space,” a skill necessary for successful self-management and relational exchanges. That cognizance, as well as knowing how and when to access it, is emotional intelligence in a nutshell.