Emotional Safety

The emotions of students are important in the classroom in two major ways. First, emotions have an impact on learning. They influence our ability to process information and to accurately understand what we encounter. For these reasons it is important for teachers to create a positive, emotionally safe classroom environment to provide for the optimal learning of students. Second, learning how to manage feelings and relationships constitutes a kind of “emotional intelligence” that enables people to be successful.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is fundamental not only to children’s social and emotional development but also to their physical and emotional health, ethical development, citizenship, motivation to achieve, and academic learning as well.

1. They are self-aware. They are able to recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values, and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.
2. They are able to regulate their emotions. They are able to manage stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward the achievement of personal and academic goals and express their emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.
3. They are socially aware. They are able to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences. They are able to seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources.
4. They have good relationship skills. They can establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure; constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict; and seek and provide help when needed.
5. They demonstrate responsible decision-making at school, at home, and in the community. In making decisions, they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of their schools and communities.

Here are some examples:

• Young children can to be taught through modeling and coaching to recognize how they feel or how someone else might be feeling.
• Prompting the use of a conflict-resolution skill and using dialoguing to guide students through the steps can be an effective approach to helping them apply a skill in a new situation.
• In class meetings, students can practice group decision-making and setting classroom rules.
• Students can learn cooperation and teamwork through participation in team sports and games.
• Students deepen their understanding of a current or historical event by applying it to a set of questions based on a problem-solving model.
• Cross-age mentoring, in which a younger student is paired with an older one, can be effective in building self-confidence, a sense of belonging, and enhancing academic skills.
• Having one member of a pair describe a situation to his partner and having the partner repeat what he or she heard is an effective tool in teaching reflective listening. 

CASEL Website: www.casel.org

Annenberg Learner. (2013). The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice: Session 5 Overview.  Retrieved from https://www.learner.org/series/the-learning-classroom-theory-into-practice/feelings-count-emotions-and-learning/

Elias, M. J., Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Frey, K. S., Greenberg, M. T., Haynes, N. M., ... & Shriver, T. P. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators. Ascd.

Zins, J. E., Bloodworth, M., Weissberg, R. P., & Walberg, H. J. 2004, Teachers College Press.

Bohnenkamp, J. H., Schaeffer, C. M., Siegal, R., Beason, T., Smith-Millman, M., & Hoover, S. (2021). Impact of a school-based, multi-tiered emotional and behavioral health crisis intervention on school safety and discipline. Prevention science, 22(4), 492-503.

Gonzalez, G. C., Cerully, J. L., Wang, E. W., Schweig, J., Todd, I., Johnston, W. R., & Schnittka, J. (2020). Social and Emotional Learning, School Climate, and School Safety: A Randomized-Controlled Trial Evaluation of Tools for Life® in Elementary and Middle Schools. Research Report. RR-4285-NIJ. RAND Corporation.

Quiros, L., Kay, L., & Montijo, A. M. (2012). Creating emotional safety in the classroom and in the field. Reflections: Narratives of professional helping, 18(2), 42-47.

CASEL: Guide to Schoolwide SEL. (2019). Belonging and emotional safety. A Supportive Classroom Environment - Belonging and Emotional Safety - CASEL Schoolguide. Available at https://schoolguide.casel.org/focus-area-3/classroom/a-supportive-classroom-environment/belonging-and-emotional-safety/

Cipriano, C., Ha, C., Wood, M., Sehgal, K., Ahmad, E., & McCarthy, M. F. (2024). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of universal school-based SEL programs in the United States: Considerations for marginalized students. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 100029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2024.100029