Own and other people's feelings

Experiencing different kinds of emotions, such as interest, curiosity, security, joy, satisfaction in connection with learning can be a strong motivation to want to learn more. Even negative emotions can act as incentives for learning. We see a picture, a film clip or read a book where e.g. different kinds of injustices emerge and this can make us want to find out more about the underlying causes. For students, it can sometimes be challenging to recognize their own and other people's feelings and put those feelings into words. The feeling of fear can take the form of anger. Various sustainability-related issues can arouse strong positive emotions such as empathy and hope, but also anxiety and feelings of hopelessness. To, as a teacher, completely refrain from raising various sustainability-related issues around e.g. climate change for fear of arousing or increasing students' climate anxiety is not an option. The students need safe frameworks where they can highlight their thoughts on the issues.

In order to avoid climate anxiety, in addition to knowledge and various skills, the student needs to experience a sense of hope (Pihkala, 2018; Ojala, 2016).

Synonyms for emotion concepts

Being able to talk about feelings requires that the students have words for the different feelings. Through the so-called progressive brainstorming, students build up a bank of synonyms for e.g. the concepts of happy, angry, sad and afraid. The four emotions are written as headings at four stations. The student groups receive a marker pen (each group has its own color) and the group starts at one of the stations. At the given signal, the group moves clockwise to the next station and the student group enters words that are not yet on the list. After a full lap at the stations, the overall result is discussed as a whole class. The different concepts can be trained further with the help of different images or texts. The students are tasked in groups to e.g. combine the image or text part with one of the emotion words from the lists.

Problem solving with given feelings

In this exercise, the students in groups are first given their feeling by the teacher (or by drawing lots). The students are then given a problem to solve or a question to discuss in the group. In the discussion, the student participates based on the given feeling, i.e. the student who received the note "curious" asks curious questions and comments, while the student who received the note "doubtful" acts accordingly. The activity largely follows Edvard de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" model.

Shadow drama around emotions

Stretch out a white cloth in the class (e.g. a sheet) so that it is possible for one or two students to stand behind the cloth while the other students are in front of the cloth. Turn off the lights in the room and point a lamp behind the fabric so that the student standing behind the fabric creates a shadow against the fabric.

The student or pair of students standing behind the fabric receives a note with a written emotional word. The student's task will now be to show the feeling without sound through their position and movement. The students in front of the fabric can observe the shadow and guess what feeling it might be about.

Visualize the feeling with colors and/or music

Sometimes words are not enough and then it may be appropriate to use music and/or the tools of the visual arts to communicate the feelings. This activity can be done both ways. Select appropriate images with a sustainability theme and ask students to choose a piece of music that they associate with. Alternatively, the music can be given and the students' task is to create the feeling that the music evokes through imaginative or abstract images.

Empathy mapping

Empathy mapping is originally designed for people who work with marketing, but the tool can just as well be used in a teaching context. Choose a person in a book chapter, a character in a movie clip, a Storyline character, etc. Study the person - What does he say?, What does he do? Draw up the four areas of the map (Said, Did, Thought, Felt) on a piece of paper. Filling in what the person says and does is often much easier than typing text into the "thought" and "felt" boxes. The activity can be extended to consider what the person in question needs. Tip: Ask students to write the needs as verbs - sleep, eat, love .. A wider explanation of the empathy map can be found here.