For over a year, we have been warning you about Yale's Center for Emotional Intelligence social emotional learning (SEL) program," RULER ": Recognizing. Understanding. Labeling.
Expressing. Regulating. And we have been suggesting the program was being tested at Eastern Middle School (EMS).
Remember the “Mood Meter” obedience training tool that asks students "how they are feeling”? Yesterday's EMS GatorBytes Newsletter included an announcement that, "thanks to a grant provided by Greenwich Alliance for Education (GEA) EMS staff are piloting a supplemental SEL program called RULER.” Three EMS staff members recently completed the six-week online RULER training. This summer, the EMS RULER team expands to eight members and will plan the staff roll-out for the school year 2022-2023. During Spring 2023 or the 2023-2024 School Year, staff will begin to integrate aspects of the RULER approach into their classrooms (e.g., establishing a classroom or team charter, learning feeling words, introducing the mood meter as a tool, etc.). Additionally, RULER aims to infuse the principles of emotional intelligence into how families parent, too, because it is not enough to indoctrinate just your children. This is exactly what we have been warning you about. Also, this content was never approved by the Board of Education. So that begs the question, how did EMS sidestep BOE approval in order to roll out this new curriculum? Why did GEA provide the funding, instead of it being funded through the school’s budget? Was that to avoid going through the BOE approval process? It sort of reminds us about how the school accepted a gift from the controversial GLSEN group in order to add certain books into the library… that way the school can say it never paid. And did you realize that a BOE member also sits on the Board of GEA? What a coincidence!
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