RULER

An evidence-based approach to social & emotional learning. Learn about upcoming trainings at our website below. For more about our research, visit @YaleEmotion.

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

Love Viktor Frankl’s work :) The Meta-Moment technique I co-developed with @RobinSStern, and write about in Dealing with Feeling, is built for exactly this space between activation and response.

We all get activated. The question is whether we let the feeling drive the reaction, or pause long enough to choose a response that serves who we want to be. That space is a skill, and it can change everything.

The full conversation is on the Mighty Pursuit podcast: https://t.co/L7slovV8Zc

#MightyPursuit #DealingwithFeeling #MetaMoment #BestSelf

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

Had a quick chat with @WTNH this morning. Always grateful for their team. A little Dealing With Feeling in real life :)

https://t.co/I5J5uqNzHN

#dealingwithfeeling

[RULER @rulerapproach]

When a student asks for space, we have a chance to see more than the behavior. Sometimes what they are showing us is trust, self-awareness, and the beginning of regulation.

What would it mean to meet that moment with dignity?

#teacherappreciationweek

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

We forget that teachers are feeling the school day too.

If Teacher Appreciation Week only rewards endless calm, we miss the harder human work happening in classrooms every day. Students are not learning from perfect adults. They are learning from adults who can feel pressure, care, concern, frustration, and all the things a school day brings, then pause, name what is real, repair, and keep the room safe enough for students to do the same.

Debra Turner reminds us that RULER is not just language students use. It is a culture adults live in front of them. Dr. Dawn Brooks-DeCosta helped build the foundation for it, and @drmarcbrackett and RULER keep asking schools to take this seriously.

#TeacherAppreciationWeek #Educators #RULER #EmotionalIntelligence

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere should bother us because this does not end when the documentary cycle moves on.

Boys are not the manosphere. Adults cannot leave them alone with a script that turns shame into blame and domination into belonging. More in @educationweek: https://t.co/0lKblM3aLq

[RULER @rulerapproach]

This is the kind of research that helps explain what so many educators already feel in real time. When the adults are supported differently, students experience school differently. What would change if more schools started there?

https://t.co/XYi3w8Gdel

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

Some people think RULER is something you design for the kids. A program. A set of lessons. Something that goes into the classroom.

But year one of RULER belongs entirely to the adults. Before any student receives a single lesson, educators spend a full year doing their own personal and professional learning with our RULER skills.

Dr. Jessica Hoffmann and her team looked at school climate data from students across 37 partner schools in Mexico, before and after that adult learning year. The results were clear. School climate had already improved across every dimension they measured, before the kids had been taught a single thing.

The students felt the difference because of who their teachers were becoming. That is what RULER is built on. The adults go first. And when they do, the whole school feels it.

Training and support 🔗 https://t.co/pgG82ahGri

#EducatorSupport #EducatorLeaders #ProfessionalDevelopment #RULER #EmotionalIntelligence #Emotionsmatter

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

The research on kids and RULER is real. I can point to it all day.

But some of the most meaningful feedback I get comes straight to my inbox, from school leaders trying to use these skills in real time when something challenging happens and the building is looking to them for steadiness before they have fully found it themselves.

I think we need more honest conversations about that part of leadership.

School leaders deserve more rooms where that part of the job can be talked about out loud. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence Leadership Symposium is one of them. 

🔗 https://t.co/XeCODIz8Ef

#RULER #LeadershipDevelopment #SchoolLeaders #Educators #EmotionsMatter @YaleEmotion

[RULER @rulerapproach]

Children know the difference between a room that welcomes feelings and a room that only welcomes easy ones.

#DealingwithFeeling #emotionregulation

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

A school can use every right word and still miss the child standing in front of it.
@drmarcbrackett and Dr. Dawn Brook-DeCosta get at something bigger here than feelings alone. They get at trust, delivery, and what children learn when adults say they care, but only know how to receive certain parts of them.

From the vault: Dealing with Feeling on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/LlxNCmhI53

Spotify: https://t.co/rncbaiqGhw

#SEL #Howareyoufeeling #emotionalintelligence #emotionsmatter #educators

[RULER @rulerapproach]

New! Eligible RULER schools can now send an individual to the RULER Institute at a reduced training-only rate. Perfect for new hires or re-engagement. 
Register: https://t.co/Y2O4OnbhWu #SEL #EdChat #K12 #ProfessionalDevelopment #EmotionalIntelligence #RULER

[RULER @rulerapproach]

If you are leading SEL work in a school or district, RULER was built for this. It’s an evidence- based approach from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence that focuses on clear skills, adult capacity, and implementation that actually holds. https://t.co/0PP5RzwyYs

#SEL #EI

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

You cannot pull adult SEL out of implementation and expect the rest to stay standing.

Students do not experience SEL as a framework on paper. They experience it by observing adults' tone, regulation, repair, relationships, and the consistency of those skills across the school day. That is why adult learning cannot be assumed. It has to be built into training, implementation, and the support schools provide over time.

Our new Education Week essay explores a three-domain framework for educator SEL: learn it, live it, teach it. When adults are supported across all three, SEL has a better chance of becoming something students experience everywhere, not just something they are taught once.

🔗https://t.co/qtBeM6LyDf

#SEL #Educators #ProfessionalDevelopment #SELResearch #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipDevelopment @drmarcbrackett @RobinSStern

[RULER @rulerapproach]

That’s the purpose of the symposium. Two days to get your footing back, with people who understand the weight of the role.

Info at -> https://t.co/kVuuJNiXBE

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

If we only talk about educator well-being when someone is already burned out, we are treating the symptom and calling it support.

What we keep hearing from district leaders is simpler and harder: staff well-being is built into the day. It shows up in what gets protected when the week gets heavy, how conflict is addressed when everyone is tired, and whether people feel safe enough to speak honestly without consequences.

This is why emotional intelligence belongs in leadership, not as a slogan, but as a daily practice that shapes culture, retention, and learning conditions.

If you’re leading that work, this is the kind of conversation we’re having at the Leadership Symposium: https://t.co/0QQaIFDZNm

#Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #Educators #SEL #EmotionalIntelligence

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

We have collectively decided that breathing is the answer to everything. Stressed at work, take a breath. Argument with your partner, take a breath. Full sensory meltdown in a grocery store, take a breath.

And yes, it helps. But anyone who has ever tried to breathe their way through something genuinely hard knows that at some point it stops being enough.

The research is clear that we need a full range of strategies, not one we reach for every time regardless of what we are actually dealing with. The goal is to have enough options that something is available to you wherever you are.

One tool does not build a house.

#EmotionRegulation #DealingwithFeeling #EmotionalIntelligence

[RULER @rulerapproach]

Are we building spaces where a wider vocabulary feels normal, or are kids learning to edit themselves down to “fine,” “whatever,” and “weird” because it gets them through the day?

RULER info sessions: https://t.co/udv9GjAsUG

#emotionsmatter #emotionalintelligence

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

If a kid’s emotion word is “weird,” that is not a punchline. It is a clue.

Craig Bailey’s research suggests kids’ emotion language is social. Who they talk to shapes what they say and what they stop saying.

Are we making school spaces where specific feelings are safe to name, or do students learn to shrink everything down to “fine,” “whatever,” and “weird”?

RULER info sessions coming up:
 https://t.co/HLE0KmZnlF

#EmotionsMatter #RULER #EmotionalIntelligence #EmotionSocialization #ResearchSpotlight #Education

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

You gave the whole day away. Again. And at 11pm you picked up your phone… not because you weren't tired, but because you weren't ready to end a day that never felt like your own.

Nikki Elbertson mentions the term. Revenge bedtime procrastination. But we call it a signal worth listening to.

What would it look like for women in schools to reach the end of the day with more of themselves still intact?

 #womenshistorymonth

[RULER @rulerapproach]

If this resonates, join us for an upcoming RULER info session to explore how schools can build leadership cultures where empathy, steadiness, and emotional intelligence are recognized as real strengths.

https://t.co/Gt4BFJ6VNk

#educators #womenhelpingwomen #womenshistorymonth

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

A narrow definition of power can live inside a girl for a long time. Sometimes it sounds like leadership has to be hard or forceful before it counts.

Women educators lead through empathy, steadiness, and understanding. This is not just "part of the job." It is leadership.

Maybe part of the work is expanding what power looks like before girls learn to mistrust the forms of it that already live in them. #womenshistorymonth

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

We train teachers to deliver SEL. Far less helps them live it when the room gets hard. That gap matters more than people think, because students do not just experience the lesson. They experience the tone, trust, repair, and steadiness of the adult in front of them.

We wrote about it in our new essay for Education Week: https://t.co/xqcBvO42sz

#EducatorWellBeing #SEL #EmotionalIntelligence #RULER #EducationWeek @RobinSStern @YaleEmotion @rulerapproach @educationweek

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

It is one of the strangest things about the way we live now.

We are in the room but we are not in the room. We are recording the moment instead of being inside it, and somewhere along the way we decided that was the same thing. It is not.

Presence is a choice. It requires putting down the thing that promises to preserve the moment so you can actually be in it.

And I am genuinely curious, to my friends who are performers, singers, entertainers, presenters: have you ever just stopped mid-show, looked out at the audience, and noticed that? What did that feel like?

#presence #dealingwithfeeling #emotionalintelligence

[RULER @rulerapproach]

Info session here: https://t.co/kVuuJNiXBE

#leadershipdevelopment #EducationMatters #SEL #EmotionalIntelligence

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

If you want change to last, stop sending one person to a training and expecting them to carry it home alone. When teams learn together, the language sticks and the plan sticks. It has a chance to live past the conference room. 

We’re bringing this into the YCEI Symposium with practical tools for real school days. What do you want your team to practice first?

Join our April 9 info session for the July Leadership Symposium: https://t.co/BxpVBYyZ5A

#Leadershipdevelopment #educatorleadership #emotionalintelligence

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

Women’s superpower is how deeply they care for others. But for women in education, sometimes that dedication manifests as organizing their lives around not letting everyone else down.

Dr. Jessica Hoffmann put language to something schools make impossible to miss: women still become the default for invisible and gendered work, while girls are praised for being “so put together.” 

That is how one generation’s overextension becomes the next generation’s script. If we want girls to have a healthier relationship with power, voice, and self-trust, they need a wider vision of womanhood.

#WomenSupportingWomen #WomensHistoryMonth #RULER #EmotionsMatter

[RULER @rulerapproach]

We ask people to learn, lead, and connect every day. Emotion is part of all of it!

We’ll see you there: https://t.co/1MGuxkjUid

#Emotionsmatter

[Marc Brackett @drmarcbrackett]

We still talk about intelligence as though emotion is not shaping it. But it is.
Thirty-five years after emotional intelligence entered the scientific literature, the field is still growing, still challenging us, and still opening new questions.

This July at Yale, TISEI’s Tenth Annual Congress will bring together the past, present, and future of emotional intelligence as the field marks 35+ years.

Register by June 28: https://t.co/6kjdXbdYeu

#EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipDevelopment #EI #EmotionRegulation @cimenna @rulerapproach @YaleEmotion @tisei8674 @ZoranaPsych @RobinSStern @drheidibrooks @SaloveyPeter @YaleMed @YaleCSC @YaleSOM @Yale

[RULER @rulerapproach]

#SELWeek
RULER Info Session: https://t.co/zEH4vnwbL5

[@YaleEmotion @YaleEmotion]

When we call SEL “therapy,” we quietly set teachers up to fail and we confuse what kids are actually supposed to learn in school.

Kids deserve skill building in emotional intelligence and emotion regulation, and they also deserve access to real clinical care when they need treatment. 

Those lanes matter.

RULER is built as education, not treatment. If you are implementing SEL, start here: https://t.co/xHnYGDxBug

#RULER #EmotionsMatter #EmotionalIntelligence #Leadership #SEL