Understanding Our Emotions for Social and Emotional Literacy

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Thomas O'Donnell reads about Twiggle the Turtle to his kindergartners at Matthew Henson Elementary School in Baltimore. Elissa Nadworny/NPR

Love this article on the importance of emotional literacy for our students in our classroom! In it, Maanvi Singh, the author, talks about the FastTrack Project that looked to change students’ life trajectory by teaching them about social-emotional intelligence. The findings report that “By age 25, those who were enrolled in the special program not only had done better in school, but they also had lower rates of arrests and fewer mental health and substance abuse issues. The results of this decades-long study were published in September in the American Journal of Psychiatry.” Let’s give all our students this opportunity!

For those of you that are teachers, and are starting to think about how to incorporate all that you are experiencing with Onward into your professional life, how can you bring emotional literacy into our elementary classrooms? Make a decision to add a book or an activity into your classroom that teaches students about emotions. If you already do this, share your favorite books in the comments so we can help each other grow in this area.