What makes Black Diamond Adventures special is our staff’s emotional intelligence and their psychological approach when working with participants. They build positive, trusting and respectful relationships!
Black Diamond Psychology – A friendly reminder!
Issue 1 | Connection before Content – Relationships are key
Although, here at Black Diamond Adventures, our core business falls under Outdoor Education, where our primary role might be seen as instructors of typical camp activities such as abseiling, bush walking, canoeing etc, on a deeper evaluation one would discover that is not the case. What makes Black Diamond Adventures special is our staff’s emotional intelligence and their psychological approach when working with participants. They build positive, trusting and respectful relationships!
There are many foundational reasons why working hard to establish these relationships is important. We believe that forming this bond is the critical first step for every educator. For growth (academic or personal) to take place in any person it requires them to move out of their comfort zone and into the learning zone. However, human’s basic instincts are to retreat/remain in their comfort zones. Therefore, the educator must establish a relationship and a degree of trust and respect between themselves and their students so that the student will feel safe/confident to move into the learning zone when they are encouraged.
In the early stages, the depth of the relationship is shallow and fragile. It is incredibly important that when you first establish a small amount of trust and are successful at getting your student to move into their learning zone that it is a positive experience. This will enable the student’s degree of trust in you to grow. If you push the students too far, they are at risk of moving into the danger zone. This will be detrimental to any trust you have established with your student. It is important to note that in any context, what activities lie in each of the 3 areas (comfort zone, learning zone & danger zone) will be different for each of your pupils. It is critical that you take small steps in the beginning to gauge each of your student’s boundaries, to avoid asking too much or too little of them.
Unlike in schools and the everyday teaching environment, on an outdoor education program, such as The Duke of Edinburgh Adventurous Journey, we don’t have a whole year to work on these relationships and establish trust. Black Diamond staff must make this happen quickly in order to get the best out of each participant on our programs. Below are a few ways that we do this.
Connection before Content
- Learning names as quickly as possible, remembering them and using them often!
- Enticing participants to choose to move out of their comfort zones rather than being asked. This is done through FUNN. Activities that, from the outside, appear to be enjoyable, and as the acronym suggests – Functional Understanding Not Necessary! This means that students can easily see and interpret what is happening in the activity and join in as they please! Note. Choice of activity in the early stages should not focus on success and failure!
- Enabling positive interactions to take place between the group itself.
- Use positive reinforcement and highlight student’s strengths
- Having an understanding of Basic Emotional Intelligence Principles
The above list seems very simple, and it is! However, as we become comfortable in our role as educators, we get distracted by so many other things that are happening (curriculum, assessment, school projects, excursions etc) that we can sometimes forget to focus on the basic, yet essential aspects of teaching.
The intention of this blog (more to follow on Emotional Intelligence & Positive Psychology) is to trigger a response from you back in the learning environment. Returning to school from the isolation period is the perfect time to reflect on this concept. I encourage you to be conscious each lesson/interaction with your students/staff about how you will encourage and grow positive, respectful and trusting relationships. It will be imperative to rebuild strong connections quickly. I can guarantee that time and effort employed here will make your job not only much easier but also so much more rewarding.
Our next Blog post will focus on emotional intelligence and its role in applying positive psychology.
References & further reading
Mark Collard
Positivepschyology.com
Psychologytoday.com