The RULER Approach

Adults can get so focused on fixing the grade that we miss the part where a child starts turning it into a story about who they are.

They say “I can’t,” and we hear a problem to solve, but they may already be thinking this means they’re not smart enough, not capable, not someone who can do this.

And reassurance helps, but it doesn’t always get underneath that. “I failed this test” and “I’m a failure” are not the same thought. The work is helping one hard moment stay one hard moment instead of becoming an identity.

Marc Brackett and James Gross talk about reappraisal on Dealing with Feeling.

What have you heard a child say about themselves after one bad grade?

What does meaningful family engagement look like in a RULER school?

Join us Oct. 14 at 3 PM ET for a conversation featuring educators from Highview Elementary School and P.S. 101 School in the Gardens. They’ll share examples of family-friendly RULER events, resources, and ways to connect with families throughout the school year.

Register on RULER Online! https://ruler.online/announcements
Nanuet Union Free School DistrictPS. 101Q School in the Garden

Imagine finding out you got a worse grade because your teacher walked into class in a bad mood.

Teachers evaluated the exact same student work differently depending on the emotions they were feeling beforehand. And when they were asked whether those emotions affected their grading, they didn’t think they did.

Which is uncomfortable because kids never know what happened before we walked into the room. They only know how we treated them once we got there.

And some of us probably still remember being on the receiving end of that.

What did an adult say or do when you were a kid that only made sense years later?

Somewhere between “your child needs consequences” and “the teacher needs to do better,” the child disappears. And that is how a hard day becomes a fight between adults before anyone has made room for the child at the center of it.

But when everyone is focused on who is to blame, we miss what the child’s behavior was trying to tell us in the first place.

Emotional intelligence in schools is not about excusing student behavior, and it cannot mean asking already overwhelmed educators to absorb even more. It means giving schools the people, time, and relationships that help educators and families understand what happened and respond in a way that helps a child respond differently next time.

When a child struggles at your school, who gets protected first, the adults’ certainty or the child’s chance to be understood?

We do not talk about this enough. When a student walks in already falling apart, the adults around them are often managing their own fear about what that distress means, for the student’s future, for the relationship, for themselves.

And that fear enters the room before the student’s story does.

Most adults are already three catastrophes ahead before the student finishes their first sentence. The student feels that. And they learn to filter what they share, soften the truth, and protect the adult from the full weight of what they are carrying. The students who need us most are the ones who have gotten the best at doing this.

Marc Brackett and Dr. Jenny Wang (Dr. Jenny Tzu-Mei Wang) on what it actually takes to show up for a student who is falling apart. From the vault on Dealing With Feeling. Link in bio/stories

Most educators have probably said some version of “you’ll get over it” to a student who was struggling, and meant it as reassurance. But what matters is not only what we intend. It is also what the student hears.

Because sometimes what they hear is not reassurance at all. They hear that they should be over it already, that the feeling is too much, or that “I’m fine” is easier than trying to explain what is actually happening.

And that is where a coping strategy can become a dismissal without us realizing it.

Temporal distancing can work. But it works differently when the student is helped to generate that perspective themselves rather than having it imposed on them. Sometimes the difference is a question instead of an answer.

Marc Brackett and Ethan Kross | Psychology & Emotions on Dealing With Feeling. From the vault. Link in bio.

We ask students every day to recognize their emotions, manage them, and make thoughtful choices. But that work has to include the adults in the building too.

More than 60 educators from Mannheim School District 83 spent two days this summer digging into the research, reflecting on their own experiences, practicing the skills, and thinking about how they want to show up for one another and for their students this fall.

Amy and Mariam Korangy from YCEI led the training, and we’re grateful to Michael Courington and Mannheim School District 83 for having us.

If you’re interested in bringing RULER to your school or district, learn more at the link in our bio.

We have spent decades asking why children are struggling, while the research has continued pointing to something we still do not take seriously enough.

It is not that children are weak or that something is fundamentally wrong with them. It is that we have built entire systems around their academic development while leaving far too much of their emotional development to chance. And then we wonder why the behavior is so hard to manage, the relationships feel so fragile, and the kids who seem fine on paper are falling apart at home.

Emotional intelligence is not a personality trait and it is not something children either have or do not have. It is a set of five learnable skills, and decades of work across thousands of schools show what can happen when those skills are given the same attention as academic ones.

And it is the lifelong practice that can take a child further than any grade, any test score, or any college acceptance letter ever will.

More from our director, Marc Brackett, in his conversation with Mel Robbins on The Mel Robbins Podcast

We say students have permission to feel, but in school that permission can get conditional fast.

If the feeling takes too much time, pulls the lesson off track, or makes the adult uncomfortable, it often has to become perspective, gratitude, resilience, or something we can fix before the bell rings.

But that comes with a cost. And then we wonder why the response is “I’m fine,” when we may have taught students that the safest feeling is the one that asks the least of us.

The hopeful part is not that adults should stop reassuring students. It is that there is a moment before the bright side where a student can be met instead of moved along.

Marc Brackett and whitney goodman lmft talk about that moment on Dealing with Feeling, and how to notice when comfort is helping, and when it is asking the feeling to disappear.