What is UpToYou
UpToYou is a free public platform for the study and dissemination of emotional education understood as integration, that is, personal growth. It is an educational option that understands that the key to education is found more in interpersonal relationships than, while they also have their place, in acquiring skills or techniques. This encounter develops in an emotional key because the emotions, far from being a mere reaction, are an expression of our way of living and being. Emotional dialogue is a personal dialogue and emotional education should enable and promote this interpersonal encounter.
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The program aims to provide tools to young people in the first years of adolescence so that they can manage their own emotional situation in connection with their growth. It also aids the teacher-student relationship.
This program relies on an inter-institutional team between the University of Navarra and the Pious Schools of the Emaus Province. This relationship enables the project to bring together practical experience working with adolescents and university teaching and research.
Adolescence presents young people with a series of challenges, including a) maturity in decision-making, implementation and monitoring, b) maturity in social relations, both among peer groups and with the adult world, c) identity clarification, thus acquiring an awareness of their being and their role in and view of the world. These three challenges are overcome together since they are mutually dependent.
For adolescents to successfully overcome the challenges proper to their age, they must arrive at adequate emotional management, among other things. This allows them to responsibly assume their own existence and, therefore, have a proactive stance on their life that is conducive to growth and free of continual angst. This project therefore understands that emotional education’s natural environment is found in adolescence and its process of maturity.
The program’s name, UpToYou (as in "It’s up to you”), was chosen because adolescents often live their emotional state as an extreme and, consequently, are buffeted by the winds of emotions and feelings, as if they were on a ship sailing without a rudder. This program helps them to see that they themselves can set their limits. They are taught to get to know themselves, as well as their inner dynamics, and to act on them with an understanding of themselves and their situation.
Thematic stop light colors were chosen as a simple illustration of adolescents’ inner dynamics, i.e., green represents inner dynamics that young people can let flow forth, yellow represents dynamics that need to be contextualized and red represents dynamics that should be reworked with new alternatives.
Rather than being a program designed for adults and translated to adolescents, this program was designed exclusively with young people in mind. Dealing with adolescents has its own peculiarities, which neuropsychology clearly shows, and, as such, this program attempts to harness adolescents’ emotional situation as a platform to achieve overall development.
The program consists of the following: a) an assignment in class and at home (the latter is optional, but highly desirable), b) group meetings divided into two stages: initially the entire group and other support group meetings, c) personal interviews (about three a year), to end with parent-teacher educational meetings. This book only contains instructions on how to develop this program directly with students. If you would like other materials, please contact us.
This program relies on an inter-institutional team between the University of Navarra and the Pious Schools of the Emaus Province. This relationship enables the project to bring together practical experience working with adolescents and university teaching and research.
Adolescence presents young people with a series of challenges, including a) maturity in decision-making, implementation and monitoring, b) maturity in social relations, both among peer groups and with the adult world, c) identity clarification, thus acquiring an awareness of their being and their role in and view of the world. These three challenges are overcome together since they are mutually dependent.
For adolescents to successfully overcome the challenges proper to their age, they must arrive at adequate emotional management, among other things. This allows them to responsibly assume their own existence and, therefore, have a proactive stance on their life that is conducive to growth and free of continual angst. This project therefore understands that emotional education’s natural environment is found in adolescence and its process of maturity.
The program’s name, UpToYou (as in "It’s up to you”), was chosen because adolescents often live their emotional state as an extreme and, consequently, are buffeted by the winds of emotions and feelings, as if they were on a ship sailing without a rudder. This program helps them to see that they themselves can set their limits. They are taught to get to know themselves, as well as their inner dynamics, and to act on them with an understanding of themselves and their situation.
Thematic stop light colors were chosen as a simple illustration of adolescents’ inner dynamics, i.e., green represents inner dynamics that young people can let flow forth, yellow represents dynamics that need to be contextualized and red represents dynamics that should be reworked with new alternatives.
Rather than being a program designed for adults and translated to adolescents, this program was designed exclusively with young people in mind. Dealing with adolescents has its own peculiarities, which neuropsychology clearly shows, and, as such, this program attempts to harness adolescents’ emotional situation as a platform to achieve overall development.
The program consists of the following: a) an assignment in class and at home (the latter is optional, but highly desirable), b) group meetings divided into two stages: initially the entire group and other support group meetings, c) personal interviews (about three a year), to end with parent-teacher educational meetings. This book only contains instructions on how to develop this program directly with students. If you would like other materials, please contact us.
Approach
"Personal growth equates to the growth of interpersonal relationships." |
It is our understanding that no person lives in isolation; rather the person is defined by his or her interpersonal relationships and personal growth amounts to the growth of these relationships. Furthermore, we understand emotions as a reflection of a person’s existential situation at a particular moment in time and that the person is unique in that she experiences intimacy. Therefore, we understand that emotional education as integration can serve as a platform for personal and social growth.
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Goals"To help participants make a journey of personal growth" |
We aim to help participants make a journey of personal growth whose first step is the acceptance of their personal reality, which can be discovered through their emotional situation. Therefore, in a peaceful atmosphere, the information contained in the emotions can be discovered, thus getting to know participants’ personal situations and helping them understand that emotions incite a state of change that is called growth. We then guide participants through their interior, so that from there they can make decisions about daily life and, from what they learn, choose a path of personal improvement. All this is done with a practical focus and a support group.
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Concepts
Integration"Integration is not the destination, but rather a path to growth"Integrating involves a maturity process in which various aspects and relationships are differentiated and optimized to the extent that they are, in turn, set in relation to each other. Integration is not therefore a state or characteristic that can be achieved. Integration is not something that just happens, but rather makes things happen. Integration is not the destination, but rather a path to growth...
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Growth - Human development"Growing involves embracing what one is and finding a path to perfection only to be what, somehow, one already is"Growth does not imply multiplying oneself or getting bigger, which just means more of the same. Rather, growth implies something new as a result of development. Growing involves embracing what one is (i.e., one’s body, personal history, culture, etc.) and finding a path to perfection only to be what, somehow, one already is. All dimensions of humanity grow in the relationship between them. It's not about them growing individually and then putting them together, but rather about them growing in relation to one another...
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Emotion"Emotions are extremely cold and logical"Although it sounds strange, emotions are extremely cold and logical. This is because emotions are essentially effect. Emotions are the "summary" of what has gone before, who and how one lives, and what one wants, does and feels. Thus, emotions are seen as information, even though they are a bit cryptic because they do not tell us anything directly, but rather reveal the confluence of many things...
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Education"The person should be at the basis and everything else should follow"Education is nothing if it does not help one grow. But, by only encouraging growth in one part of a person, a monster emerges since true growth is based on overall growth. Thus, an education based on skills, competencies, or abilities is not adequate. Skills should not be the foundation of education; rather, the person should be at the basis and everything else should follow.
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Emotional education"They have to answer the question of what kind of people they want to be"Emotional education can only be understood through one’s one emotional reality to promote personal growth. Thus, in the UpToYou program, emotional education materializes in two steps: First, it starts by uncovering participants’ emotional reality to find out where they are personally; second, it confronts participants with the dilemma of growth, knowing that they have to answer the question of what kind of people they want to be. In conjunction with this question, it provides tools for this decision-making...
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