Читать книгу The Noble School Leader - Matthew Taylor - Страница 24

The biggest challenge and opportunity of creating the right conditions for people to learn is that emotions are contagious. Significant and astonishing brain research has proven this to be true. We have what scientists call mirror neurons that react to the emotions of those around us. These neurons dance with each other in our separate heads and hearts. The same research shows that the emotions of the person with the most power in a room are significantly more contagious than those of others (Goleman and Boyatzis 2008).¹⁴

These findings have proven what many already knew: that a school reacts to the emotions of its leader. If a leader struggles to manage chronic stress, then so will everyone else in the school. The leader's emotions and the behaviors connected to them tend to be internalized by other leaders and teachers. That's where the most frightening emotional contagion begins. A classroom of students reacts to the emotional contagion of their teacher. If a teacher is experiencing chronic stress, then so will everyone in their classroom. Consider the impact of this emotional contagion on the conditions for learning.

The science of emotional contagion teaches us that emotional conditions for learning are delicate, tenuous, and very dependent on leaders. This is true from the superintendent all the way down the chain to the teacher. There is a far more powerful and complex emotional interdependence between us than we think that impacts our ability to create emotional conditions. Everyone in a school's emotional chain is responsible for the conditions that actually come to pass. The higher up the leader, the more impact they have on the system and the more responsibility they bear for ensuring that a healthy climate of connection and challenge is present.