Social-emotional and trauma-informed learning and teaching are at the forefront of education research and study today. The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) reports that nearly 50 percent of the children in the U.S. have experienced “at least one or more types of serious childhood trauma.” Therefore, ignoring emotions in the classroom can absolutely pose a barrier to learning. One group of researchers (Kautz, Heckman, Diris, Bas ter Weel, & Borghans, 2014) found that social-emotional learning (SEL) “increases high school graduation rates, postsecondary enrollment, postsecondary completion, employment rates, and average wages.”
We sat down to discuss the emotional component of learning with Marc Brackett, PhD, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University, and the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning.