Why kids need more emotional education in school: A teacher’s perspective
The bell rang for recess last month, and Lila was still hunched over her 4th grade multiplication test, her pink eraser rubbing a clean hole through the second page. My coffee was half-steaming on my desk, a half-eaten bag of goldfish crackers someone left sat on the windowsill, and the rest of the class was already shoving their chairs in and yelling about kickball. I walked over and leaned against the edge of her desk, and didn’t say anything at first. After a minute, her shoulders started shaking. “I’m so stupid,” she mumbled into her sleeve. “I practiced all week and I still can’t get it right.”
A year ago, I would have patted her back, told her she’d do better next time, and hurried her out to recess. We had a schedule to keep, a math lesson to wrap up, and benchmarks to hit by the end of the semester. There wasn’t time to sit with a 9-year-old’s disappointment when there was so much content to cover. But this year, our school carved out 15 minutes every morning for check-in circles and started requiring all teachers to do 20 minutes of emotional literacy activities a week. I still wasn’t sold at first, to be honest. I worried we were taking time away from reading and math that kids desperately needed. But that day with Lila, I did what we’d been trained to do: I pulled the empty chair next to her and said, “It feels really terrible when you work hard and it still doesn’t go the way you wanted, doesn’t it?”
She looked up then, and nodded, and started talking. She told me her mom yells when she brings home anything lower than an A, that she’d stayed up until 8 o’clock the night before practicing flash cards, and that she was scared to bring this test home. We sat there for eight minutes, just talking. I didn’t tell her it would be okay, I didn’t offer to talk to her mom (though I did that later), I just let her say all the things she was feeling and repeated them back to her so she knew I heard them. By the end, she wiped her face on her sleeve and said she was ready to go play recess. After break, she came back and finished the test, and she only missed three questions.
That small moment changed how I think about what we actually need to teach kids. Before this emotional ed pilot, I saw kids shut down all the time. Two years ago, a 5th grader named Javi stopped turning in math homework after he failed his first big fractions quiz. By the end of the semester, he was skipping class and hanging out in the nurse’s office three days a week. No one had 20 minutes a day to sit with that, because we were all cramming for state testing. By the time we realized how much shame he was carrying around, it was almost the end of the year. That wouldn’t happen now, not because we have more staff or more money, but because we carve out the time to check in before things spiral.
A lot of parents email me worried that this means we’re putting less emphasis on grades and test scores. I get that worry. I don’t think math and reading don’t matter. What I’ve seen over the past year is that kids can’t learn math and reading when they’re carrying around big, messy feelings they don’t know how to name. When you’re 10 years old and you’re convinced you’re stupid because you got a bad grade, your brain can’t focus on the next lesson. It’s too busy trying to hold in all that shame.
The best part is, this doesn’t have to be a big, expensive program that schools can’t afford. Even if your school doesn’t have a formal emotional education block, there are tiny, low-effort things anyone can do. For teachers, you can start every class with a 30-second check-in: ask kids to hold up a thumbs up, sideways thumb, or thumbs down to show how they’re feeling that day. It takes no time, and it immediately lets you see which kids need an extra check-in before you start teaching. For parents, when your kid comes home complaining about a bad day or a bad grade, try naming the feeling first before you jump in to fix the problem. Instead of saying “just study harder next time” or “ignore the kid who was mean to you,” try “that sounds so frustrating” or “that must have really hurt your feelings.” Most of the time, that’s all kids need to be able to move on and problem-solve on their own.
Just last week, two boys got into a shoving match on the playground over a fidget spinner. A year ago, both would have gotten detention and that would have been the end of it. This time, they both came back to the classroom and we sat down to talk. One of them said, “I was really embarrassed because he knocked my drawing off my desk in front of everyone, and I got mad instead of saying that.” That’s the skill we’re teaching: being able to name what you feel instead of acting out or shutting down.
We still have a long way to go. We’re still squeezing emotional lessons in between math units and field trips, we still have testing deadlines to meet, and some days we skip check-in circles to catch up on work. Last week, I had to cut a reading lesson short to sit with a kid who was having a panic attack after his parents told him they were splitting up. I worried all day that we’d fallen behind. But then after school, I saw Lila go sit with a first grader who was crying because she missed her mom, and Lila walked her through the 4-in-6-out breathing we practice, just like she’d seen me do.
We’re still figuring this out. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t show up on any test score. But I can’t think of anything more important to teach than how to handle the hard, messy feelings that every single one of us gets, no matter how old we are.
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