West Coast Launch of the RULER Anchors of Emotional Intelligence Institute

"Emotions drive learning, decisions, relationships, health and much of our everyday effectiveness."

Marc A. Brackett, Ph.D.

The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and The Willows Community School are collaborating to bring RULER, the Center’s evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) to the West Coast. On May 8 and 9, 2018, the first West Coast RULER training will be held at The Willows Community School in Culver City, CA. Public, charter, independent, and parochial schools from California, Oregon, and Washington State will send 100+ educators and administrators to the two-day institute with the goal of enhancing the emotional intelligence of students, teachers, staff, and families by integrating RULER principles and tools into the curriculum and cultural life of their schools.

The West Coast RULER training has been made possible by the generous donations from Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Andrew Hauptman and The Hauptman Family Foundation and

The Simms/Mann Family Foundation.

“Emotions matter, and they matter a great deal in how leaders lead, teachers teach, students learn, and families parent,” states Marc Brackett, Ph.D., Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. “Research has shown us repeatedly that the skills of emotional intelligence profoundly impact a person’s ability to thrive– academically, personally and professionally. The RULER training at The Willows will allow us to reach more schools and impact more students and their families.”

RULER trainers from Yale, led by Dr. Brackett and Dena Simmons, Ed.D., Assistant Director of the Center, with Willows faculty facilitators, will work interactively with the educators in the intensive training. After the training, teams from each school attending will return to their campuses and implement RULER with ongoing support.

“We are honored to be instrumental in bringing RULER and this valuable emotional intelligence work to more West Coast schools,” says Lisa Rosenstein, Willows Head of School. “When I heard Dr. Brackett speak at a conference, I immediately knew RULER would be a perfect fit with The Willows and that emotional intelligence could be easily incorporated into all learning communities.”

RULER, developed over a 20-year period and now integrated into thousands of schools across the U.S. and internationally, has been shown to enhance teacher effectiveness, reduce conduct problems, enhance school environments, and boost academic performance. http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/

The Willows Community School is a Developmental Kindergarten through 8th grade independent, co-educational, balanced progressive school enrolling 460 students annually from 57+ zip codes across the greater Los Angeles area. http://www.thewillows.org