RULER – Emotional Intelligence

Social Emotional (SEL) Well-being is key to building successful relationships and achieving success in education and life pursuits. Inspired by the growth in our school population, school based data around this capability in conjunction with rigorous research into SELs, Vasse has placed a high importance on the explicit development of Emotional and Social skills.

RULER is the social emotional well-being approach we use at Vasse Primary School, and is the acronym for Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. We started our RULER journey in 2018 with key staff heading to Melbourne to take part in a train the trainer professional learning course delivered by founding Director, Dr Marc Brackett, Professor in the Child Study Centre at Yale University, New Haven.

In 2019, we started teaching RULER in the classrooms, with a focus largely on creating a “Class Charter” about how we want to feel when we come to school and labeling our feelings using the “Mood Meter” tool. In 2020, we have continued to work throughout the school to build on RULER skills by developing our understanding of emotional regulation through the use of the “Meta Moment” and “Blueprint” which, ties in nicely with our school PBS.

RULER supports entire school communities in understanding the value of emotions, building the skills of emotional intelligence, and creating and maintaining a positive school climate. 

RULER aims to infuse the principles of emotional intelligence into the immune system of schools, enhancing how students learn, teachers teach, families parent, and leaders lead. 

Over the last two years, Vasse Primary School can measure the RULER approach as being successful due to the common language regularly used by students throughout the school and the improved regulation of emotions in challenging situations through the collection of PBS data.