Prioritize Educator SEL

TeacherGoals is pushing schools to start social-emotional learning with adults, not students, arguing that teacher well-being sets the tone students experience every day. (teachergoals.com) In a recent post tied to a longer TeacherGoals article, the outlet said schools often spend on student curricula, behavior systems, and social-emotional learning programs while the staff delivering them are “stretched to the breaking point.” The article says that gap leaves initiatives stalled and morale lower. (teachergoals.com) The central claim matches guidance from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, which says educators and school staff “set the tone of the learning environment” and need support in developing their own social and emotional competencies. CASEL published a landscape analysis of adult social-emotional learning on July 31, 2025. (casel.org) CASEL’s school guide says schools are more effective at teaching and reinforcing social-emotional learning for students when they also attend to adult social-emotional learning. It lists staff supports that target organizational structures, including time for collaboration, relationship-building, and workload management, alongside individual supports such as mindfulness and skill-building. (schoolguide.casel.org) That message lands as teacher stress remains high. RAND reported on June 18, 2024, that teachers’ well-being in January 2024 was worse than that of similar working adults, continuing a pattern the research group has tracked since 2021. (rand.org) RAND’s 2024 findings said teachers were about twice as likely as comparable working adults to report frequent job-related stress or burnout, and roughly three times as likely to report difficulty coping with job-related stress. The survey focused on teacher retention, pay, hours worked, and intentions to leave. (rand.org) Research groups studying adult social-emotional learning are also trying to measure whether educator skills show up in student outcomes. A Northwestern-affiliated report posted August 21, 2024, analyzed 2024 survey responses from 269 K-8 educators in a district serving about 34,000 students and examined links between educator well-being, emotion regulation, relationship management, and student academic growth. (e4.northwestern.edu) Other schoolwide models already build from that premise. The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s RULER approach says implementation begins with staff personal and professional learning before expanding to classroom instruction for students and family engagement. (rulerapproach.org) TeacherGoals’ argument is narrower than a call for generic self-care. Its article says adult wellness should change school systems through the decisions of principals, teachers, counselors, and superintendents, so social-emotional learning is treated as part of working conditions rather than “one more thing.” (teachergoals.com) The through line is simple: schools asking teachers to model calm, empathy, and regulation are being told to build those conditions for staff first. That is the version of social-emotional learning TeacherGoals is trying to move into the center of the conversation. (teachergoals.com)