By Julian Fagan and Ian Fagan
What does social-emotional health mean, and how do we define a healthy child? How can schools promote student wellbeing? What responsibilities do teachers, parents and communities have? How does remote learning affect these efforts? Can children support one another?
Picture an event that provokes a powerful emotional reaction. In the heat of the moment you do something you later regret. Emotionally healthy people are not those who never feel intense emotions, but those who manage feelings so they don’t override reason. They integrate emotional insight with logical thinking, and they apply that balance both to managing themselves and to relating to others.
Emotional intelligence matters. Research has shown that skills in recognizing and managing emotions predict important life outcomes—health, achievement, financial stability and overall quality of life—often more strongly than IQ or family income. Daniel Goleman summarized findings from school programs that deliberately taught social-emotional skills and found measurable benefits:
- Antisocial behavior and classroom disruptions decreased by about 10 percent.
- Prosocial behavior—helping, sharing and cooperating—increased by about 10 percent.
- Academic performance improved by roughly 11 percent, linked to better focus and concentration.
Despite the clear impact, social-emotional development still receives less emphasis than cognitive skills. It’s easier to see and measure a child’s ability to solve a math problem or write an essay than it is to recognize resilience, empathy or emotional self-awareness. Yet these softer skills protect children’s self-esteem, help them respond constructively to bullying, and enable them to support friends. The challenge for educators and parents is finding practical ways to nurture these abilities.
Children naturally begin life driven by impulse: quick to react, slow to read social cues. The brain networks that support social and emotional intelligence mature later than those for basic motor or language skills. That means children will improve over time, but deliberate support from adults accelerates growth. Below are three concrete strategies schools and families can use to strengthen students’ social-emotional skills.
1. Identify Learning Strengths and Weaknesses
Before introducing new skills, it helps to understand how individual students learn best. Clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller advocates for “neurodevelopmental differentiation”—adapting teaching to match each learner’s brain strengths. Tools and assessments that reveal a student’s cognitive and learning preferences allow teachers and parents to tailor social-emotional instruction so it is more effective. For example, a student who learns best through conversation might practice emotional labeling and conflict resolution in partner activities, while a visually oriented learner might benefit from journals or charts to track feelings and progress.
2. Use Life Planning to Promote Wise Choices
Asking students to imagine who they want to be in five years (and who they don’t want to become) helps anchor daily choices in a larger purpose. When young people create a clear vision of their future selves, they are more likely to favor thoughtful action over immediate impulse. Encourage students to break long-term goals into short-term steps, identify habits to start or stop, and monitor progress in wellbeing domains such as sleep, relationships and study routines. Concrete planning makes it easier to choose behaviors that support emotional health and academic success.
3. Normalize Sharing Vulnerability
The ability to recognize and express emotions honestly is central to healthy relationships. Many feelings go unnamed and therefore unaddressed, which can lead to avoidance, defensiveness or acting out. Teaching students to label emotions, own regrets and ask for help reduces stigma and builds trust. Simple classroom practices—pairing students to share a fear, a regret or a recent challenge—can create empathy and strengthen social bonds. Vulnerability is not weakness; when modeled safely, it becomes the basis for forgiveness, compassion and lasting friendships.
Know Yourself to Grow
As awareness of emotional intelligence increases, so do support options: curricula, assessment tools and classroom activities. Not every strategy works for every child, and the search for effective approaches should be guided by observation and flexibility. Ultimately, social-emotional development comes down to self-knowledge: recognizing strengths and limitations, clarifying values and learning to communicate needs constructively. Parents and teachers play a crucial role not by dictating what to feel, but by showing children where to look and helping them interpret what they find.
About the authors
Julian Fagan discovered through reflection that academic achievement can be hollow when students struggle with inner conflict. To address this, Julian and his twin brother Ian co-founded the wellbeing software company Skodel, designed to give every student a regular voice and ensure their needs are noticed and acted upon. Skodel is used by schools to support weekly wellbeing check-ins.
Ian Fagan is an entrepreneur focused on education and youth mental health. After founding his first business straight out of high school, Ian shifted his attention to student wellbeing, informed by both wider trends and his own experience with mental illness. With Julian he launched Skodel to provide teachers and school staff with timely, actionable information about student wellbeing to support at-risk students.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media organization examining the transition in education toward digital curriculum and new learning practices.