RULER Spirit Week 23-24

Wright City East and West Elementary implement RULER, an approach to social and emotional learning that focuses on emotional intelligence. RULER helps students, and the adults in their lives, to learn about and manage their emotions. This is important for success in nearly every aspect of our lives—for attention, memory, and learning, for making and keeping friends, for healthy decision-making, and for our overall well-being.

RULER is an acronym for the five skills of emotional intelligence:
Recognizing emotions in oneself and others
Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary
Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context
Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

Research suggests that an important part of effectively teaching emotional intelligence is modeling the five RULER skills for children (Jennings & Greenberg 2009). One way to do this is by regularly checking in on the Mood Meter throughout the day. As children learn to use the Mood Meter, they acquire more feeling words that correspond to each color. With the Mood Meter, children learn that there are no good or bad feelings. There may be feelings that we like to have more often than others, but all feelings are okay. Even for those unpleasant feelings, we can learn to employ strategies that use the information we receive from our feelings to respond to them in ways we feel good about.

In adopting RULER, we hope to strengthen our skills of emotional intelligence, to build a stronger community, and prepare our students in their transition to kindergarten and beyond. As a way to introduce the Mood Meter and learn more about our emotions next week, we invite you to take part in our Ruler Spirit Week! See below for special ways to dress up each day. We are excited to work together to build our emotional intelligence skills.