Promoting Youth Mental Health During Covid-19: The Feasibility of Integrated Social-Emotional Learning

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was (a) to provide education to elementary school teachers on developing an emotional vocabulary and the RULER approach (recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions) to social-emotional learning (SEL), (b) demonstrate how to integrate RULER strategies into existing curriculum, and (c) evaluate their knowledge about, perceived benefits of, and perceptions regarding the feasibility of implementing the two social-emotional learning strategies.Background: Youth mental illness is pervasive throughout the United States (US) and has detrimental effects that permeate every level of society. School-based SEL programs have been shown to cultivate resilience and have been increasingly used as an avenue for mental health promotion. Teachers are often the primary implementers but have cited many challenges that limit their ability to regularly teach SEL curriculum, including time constraints, lack of knowledge, and lack of training. Methods: Participants were recruited via email to attend a Zoom-based education session that included an audio-visual presentation with practice application exercises. They were then asked to complete a retrospective pretest and posttest survey with questions pertaining to demographics, knowledge level, benefits associated with SEL, and feasibility. Results: Twelve teachers participated in the project and successfully completed all pretest/posttest materials. The results showed an increase in all measures for participant knowledge, perceived benefit, and implementation feasibility; however, only 67% of teachers anticipated having the time to integrate the new SEL strategies. Conclusions: The provided education did improve scores for all outcomes measures, showing that additional education for teachers could make SEL implementation more feasible. However, perceptions related to time constraints, although improved, were still somewhat low and represent an area requiring ongoing support.