Principles of Communication

#4. Emotional Awareness
This allows you to understand both what you feel and how others communicate the way they feel. Being aware of others' emotions will enable us to be better teachers. In a different classroom I am completing hours in, I was working with a student who legitimately could not read. At the beginning, I did not realize that he really couldn't read - I just thought that he had trouble. We were summarizing a newspaper article. When I asked him to read, this normally happy, go-lucky, funny student became very quiet and almost ashamed. Very quietly, he told me that he could not read. Since I could tell this bothered him, I did what ever I thought I could to let him know that I was going to help him and not make fun of him.