Helping teens learn about and manage their emotions is the goal of a new program educational, UpToYou. The project is part of the thesis of José Víctor Orón, researcher predoctoral group 'Mente-cerebro' del Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra, and is funded by the Fundación Caja Navarra. It will be officially presented on June 22, 2016 at Civican.

The program consists of two aspects. The first is the interdisciplinary theoretical research , which draws on the contributions of Neuroscience, Philosophy and Psychology. To develop it, José Víctor Orón has created links with the University of Reading (United Kingdom) and with the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (Mexico), centers where he has made stays during the 2015-2016 academic year.

The second line seeks to implement theoretical reflection in an educational intervention. It has been developed since 2014 in a pioneering way in the Pious Schools (Escolapios) of Tafalla (Navarra), in a group of twelve students of 1st ESO. It is expected to be extended in the near future to other public and subsidized schools in the region.

The work with the students begins on Mondays with ten minutes of play to differentiate the activity from the rest of the classes. It continues with a fifty-minute meeting of group to work on specific topics and propose tools to achieve the objectives set and ends with 30 minutes of meeting of group support. These groups are formed by couples in which they learn to share their experiences and support each other in their growth decisions staff.

On the other hand, the students have personal interviews with the tutor and develop a work staff at home: for example, every evening they reflect on how they have lived the day and thus gradually get to know themselves better inside. To do this, they use the 'traffic light' tool : they write in green the actions that go well; in yellow, those that sometimes go well or sometimes badly; and in red, those that still go badly. 

Positive results: growth staff and impulse control

During these two years he has obtained good results, from agreement with the researcher. "Not only have we received positive reports from students, parents and teachers at the center," he says, "but we have also carried out psychological evaluations pre and post test that show that students who experienced the program compared to their peers who did not participate showed a positive evolution in growth staff and statistically significant in impulsive behaviors".

It also highlights that "the improvement of UpToYou students in the way they understand themselves and their attitudes when facing new challenges" is also statistically significant.

José Víctor Orón points out that adolescence involves three complementary challenges that require a joint approach : "Maturity in decision making, its realization and follow-up; maturity in social relations both among group peers and with the adult world; and update his identity by acquiring an awareness of who he is and what his role and vision in this world is".

"In order for an adolescent to successfully face all these challenges, it is essential that they acquire an emotional management that allows them to responsibly assume their own existence and therefore have an active stance on their own life," he adds. Precisely, he stresses that the UpToYou program "teaches them to know themselves, their own inner dynamisms and to start a path of growth from an understanding of their person and their status".

presentation of the UpToYou program

Date: June 22, 2016

Venue: Civican. Avenida Pío XII, 2, 31008 Pamplona.

Time: 17:30 to 19:00 h.