Social-Emotional Focus

Fisher prioritizes social emotional learning as a central foundation to long-term success for young children. Fisher teachers are trained in evidence-based social-emotional frameworks and have access to a wealth of resources from the Fisher Inclusion Team, professional development opportunities and campus and community partnerships to support children of all ages, abilities and backgrounds in learning to understand and express their emotions, empathize with others, and learn to engage in pro-social behaviors with their peers. 

Pyramid Model

The Pyramid Model (https://challengingbehavior.org/pyramid-model/overview/basics/ )is a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children’s healthy social and emotional development. The Pyramid Model builds upon a tiered public health approach to providing universal supports to all children to promote wellness, targeted services to those who need more support, and intensive services to those who need them.

Teachers use this framework to guide classroom environment, routines and teaching practices to give children a strong foundation of competence and trust so they can build strong social-emotional competencies. The first level of the pyramid is universal strategies that benefit all children in learning. The second level helps teachers identify children who might need a little more support in building social-emotional competencies and strategies to provide that support in a classroom setting. The third level helps support intensive interventions for a small number of children with persistent challenges. The Fisher Inclusion Team supports families and teachers in providing strategies for children within the classroom and family setting in a consultative and teaming model. 

RULER

Fisher has implemented RULER (https://www.rulerapproach.org/ ), a social-emotional literacy framework from the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence. RULER supports school communities by understanding the value of emotions, building the skills of emotional intelligence, and creating and maintaining positive school climates. RULER is an acronym for the five skills of emotional intelligence:

Recognizing emotions in oneself and others
Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary
Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context
Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

Second Step

Our older classrooms use Second Step lessons to support guided instruction on specific skill learning when needed, specifically around friendship skills and problem solving.