Are you self-aware?
The first response in answering this question might be to ask—how did the question, itself, make you feel? Did your mood change? Did your body change? How are you thinking about reading this piece on the process of building self-awareness in young people as a result?
Since Socrates and Plato, "know thyself" has been a powerful recipe for developing a fulfilled and satisfying life. Socrates thought it was odd for people to spend all their time understanding the world around them without spending at least some time getting to know the nature of themselves, and, therefore, other human beings.
In Hope Collaborative's Self-Awareness learning module, we first ask students to define the term, so that inquiry-based learning can take hold. We find that participants are often so focused on their surroundings that they forget to pay any attention to what is going on internally.
Self-awareness can appear to be a deceptively simple concept. The answers to the questions "how do I feel?" or "what do I want?" can seem as though they should be obvious.
But in reality, our minds and personalities are complicated, and it's worth taking the time to investigate them, so that we have better understanding and more control of how we react to circumstances, interact with the people around us, and manage the relationships in our lives that matter most.
One of the tools we employ in the Self-Awareness module is the Mood Meter (Yale University).
It is one way for young people to monitor their emotions by placing both their energy level and their positivity or negativity on a graph.
Participants in Hope might find themselves in a low-energy, positive mood—calm or contended—in the green section of the chart, while a high-energy, positive mood like excitement would be in the yellow.
Participants check in at the beginning and end of a session to see how their mood may have changed. This begins the process of being aware of our moods, and how they affect our actions and decisions in the moment.
The first response in answering this question might be to ask—how did the question, itself, make you feel? Did your mood change? Did your body change? How are you thinking about reading this piece on the process of building self-awareness in young people as a result?
Since Socrates and Plato, "know thyself" has been a powerful recipe for developing a fulfilled and satisfying life. Socrates thought it was odd for people to spend all their time understanding the world around them without spending at least some time getting to know the nature of themselves, and, therefore, other human beings.
In Hope Collaborative's Self-Awareness learning module, we first ask students to define the term, so that inquiry-based learning can take hold. We find that participants are often so focused on their surroundings that they forget to pay any attention to what is going on internally.
Self-awareness can appear to be a deceptively simple concept. The answers to the questions "how do I feel?" or "what do I want?" can seem as though they should be obvious.
But in reality, our minds and personalities are complicated, and it's worth taking the time to investigate them, so that we have better understanding and more control of how we react to circumstances, interact with the people around us, and manage the relationships in our lives that matter most.
One of the tools we employ in the Self-Awareness module is the Mood Meter (Yale University).
It is one way for young people to monitor their emotions by placing both their energy level and their positivity or negativity on a graph.
Participants in Hope might find themselves in a low-energy, positive mood—calm or contended—in the green section of the chart, while a high-energy, positive mood like excitement would be in the yellow.
Participants check in at the beginning and end of a session to see how their mood may have changed. This begins the process of being aware of our moods, and how they affect our actions and decisions in the moment.
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Self-awareness also involves learning how to respond to your emotions, once you have identified them. Jahnea at Friends of the Children - Boston shares a poster demonstrating her technique for dealing with stress. This process involves three steps: first she checks in with herself to determine how she is feeling. Next, she chooses a response to release tension—in this case, crying it out—and finally she checks in again to see if her feelings have improved.
In addition to exploring emotional processes, students in Self-Awareness look at their own strengths, values, and long-term goals. Visual art is useful in documenting these ideas: in the photos below, students at Presidency High School in India use visual symbols to show some of their key characteristics and goals for the future.
One group of students at the Presidency School interviewed a classmate's father about his own process of self-awareness, creating art as a response. The interview included questions like "When did you first realize you had responsibility in your life?" (age 16) and "What figure do you look up to?" (Mahatma Gandhi)
Hope's Self-Awareness module uses several frameworks to advance the work of Self-Awareness, including Gardener's theory of Multiple Intelligences (seen below in Nayeliz's artwork from BGCD), the Myers-Briggs Type Index personality test, and metaphoric constructs such as the "train of thought" illustrated by Yasein at Malik Academy.
As students explore themselves through these projects, they also develop their own creative voices.
By the end of the module, students answer the question of self-awareness with an enriched understanding of the concept, as well as plenty of self-reflective work to share with the Hope community!
In addition to exploring emotional processes, students in Self-Awareness look at their own strengths, values, and long-term goals. Visual art is useful in documenting these ideas: in the photos below, students at Presidency High School in India use visual symbols to show some of their key characteristics and goals for the future.
One group of students at the Presidency School interviewed a classmate's father about his own process of self-awareness, creating art as a response. The interview included questions like "When did you first realize you had responsibility in your life?" (age 16) and "What figure do you look up to?" (Mahatma Gandhi)
Hope's Self-Awareness module uses several frameworks to advance the work of Self-Awareness, including Gardener's theory of Multiple Intelligences (seen below in Nayeliz's artwork from BGCD), the Myers-Briggs Type Index personality test, and metaphoric constructs such as the "train of thought" illustrated by Yasein at Malik Academy.
As students explore themselves through these projects, they also develop their own creative voices.
By the end of the module, students answer the question of self-awareness with an enriched understanding of the concept, as well as plenty of self-reflective work to share with the Hope community!
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