Adding Shame, Guilt, Humiliation, Embarrassment, Empathy, and Self-Compassion to the Social Emotional Learning Vocabulary

We can increase our students’ emotional literacy by adding the four self-conscious affects—shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment—to their existing social emotional learning vocabularies.

And by modeling the correct usage with students, we can teach them the subtle but important differences between these four emotions. In everyday discussions, we often substitute one for the other, and we often avoid
using the word shame altogether. But the differences between these words (and these emotions) have important implications.

This resource is part of a collection of courage-building concepts and tools that can be integrated into the classroom. You can explore more of these resources here.