Oceanside’s emotional RULER

The Oceanside School District is expanding on its “whole child” approach to education by implementing a new Social Emotional Literacy (SEL) program, starting this year at the elementary level.

The new program was developed by Yale University professor Dr. Marc Brackett. It’s called the RULER Program, which stands for Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing and Regulating.

“We feel that students and teachers come to school and are sometimes not perfectly ready to learn,” said Oceanside Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown. “And by understanding their emotions, they can better prepare to teach and to learn.”

According to Robert Fenter, the assistant principal for curriculum and instruction, studies have shown that students that are better able to understand and deal with their emotions do better academically.

The RULER Program is designed to do exactly that — teach students how to identify how they are feeling at the moment and how to relate to others on an emotional level.

Currently, the RULER program is only being used in the elementary schools. Last year, the elementary teachers were educated in the program so that they could effectively teach it to students this year. This year, the middle school students are being taught the program so they can use it next year, and next year the high school teachers will be taught.

“Programs that don’t sustain themselves usually have the characteristic of kids and adults learning at the same time,” Fenter said. “It’s not the way to do it.”

The program is based on four “anchors” — the Charter, the Mood Meter, the Blueprint and Metamoments.

“[The Charter] can best be described as a constitution for the class and for the school,” said Fenter, who described that there are charters for each classroom as well as school-wide ones. “It’s different from traditional Rules of the Class. In the past, the rules of the class started with the word ‘don’t.’ The charter says how people will behave, how they will address each other. ‘I will speak to the person when I have an issue with them rather than gossiping.’ And it puts it in a very positive way.”

The Mood Meter is a graph that helps students visualize where they are feeling emotionally. The idea is, by better understanding what they’re feeling, they’re better able to regulate their emotions.

The Blueprint is designed to help students figure out how others are feeling, both now and in their lessons. It helps them identify with someone during a conflict, but also with people during lessons. Being able to understand the emotions that people suffering during the Holocaust, Fenter said, helps students internalize the lessons more because they’re connecting with the material on an emotional level.

And the Metamoment is moment between something that triggered an emotion and a person’s response. The Metamoment is used to assess one’s own feelings and react appropriately.

“So we’re really talking about a program that helps kids be successful in school,” said Fenter. “So we want to do the program because it will help kids be happier, more successful and better adjusted. But it also doesn’t hurt that kids will perform better in school.”

Fenter hopes that students will be able to take the skills they learn in the classroom and take them to real-world situations beyond Oceanside’s halls and without being told to do so by a teacher.

“We want to give kids tools where they can be independent in utilizing these tools,” said Fenter. “So we don’t just introduce them to a mood meter, we have a mood meter poster in every classroom. So the student who may be having an emotional issue or feeling angry will have the opportunity to look up at that poster and employ the skill that we’ve taught them without teacher guidance.”