Warwick Valley Central School District is advancing its commitment to educating the whole child and preparing students for better futures by partnering with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) and adopting the organization’s RULER approach to the integration of social-emotional learning into the standard school curriculum.
RULER’s evidence-based approach applies “hard science” to the teaching of so-called soft skills such as those associated with the acronym: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotion.
Warwick’s teachers recently participated in a RULER training with Dr. Marc Brackett, YCEI director, hosted by Putnam-Westchester BOCES. Yale’s RULER team of trainers involve and support entire school communities in understanding the value of emotions, building the skills of emotional intelligence, and creating and maintaining a positive school climate.
The RULER approach is also a natural expansion of the District’s earlier introduction of the practice of mindfulness in all four schools. In September of 2018, physical education teachers and school social workers began integrating mindful breath and movement exercises to help improve students’ health, social-emotional wellbeing, and learning engagement.
The above press release has been published in the Oct. 30 issue of the Warwick Valley Dispatch.
