Regardless of how it occurs—in a classroom, individually through reading or listening, or on Zoom—learning is a social process. It is inextricably linked with our collective experience as human beings. Linked, in fact, to our success as a human species.
Our brains evolved from their primitive state with the capacity for higher-order thinking and reasoning, but these parts of the brain were only accessible when we felt safe. If survival was in question, the brain made sure that flight, fight, or freeze was the priority, muting those higher-order capacities. Building tools or establishing roles within an emerging civilization didn’t really matter if a tiger was threatening to eat you.
This basic principle remains true today. Brain science continues to reinforce the fact that safety and relationships unlock learning potential (Immordino-Yang et al., 2018). We evolved to access the learning centers of our brain responsible for attention, processing information, and memory when we are in a safe state. Feeling unsafe—whether from an approaching tiger or a sense of unpredictability in a school classroom—makes us easily distracted and emotionally and physically reactive. This happens by evolutionary design to promote survival, but it is hardly conducive to learning. The foundation of an effective learning environment is safety—physical and emotional safety.
Effective educators create that sense of safety. This is one of the most critical and challenging demands of the profession, requiring a set of skills that we have come to understand as emotional intelligence or EQ (emotional quotient).
Researchers Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990) defined emotional intelligence as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.” For a teacher, this means awareness and management of their own emotions. Salovey and Mayer also highlight the importance of monitoring “others’ feelings and emotions.” This takes on a unique meaning within the context of teaching; “other” is not just another individual, but often dozens of individuals in a classroom setting. Students rely on a teacher’s awareness of and response to their emotions to create an environment that optimizes learning. This is no small feat. The skills involved are not always intuitive, and putting them into practice is complex. Like teaching math and history, EQ in the classroom requires intentional design and rigorous implementation.
What Does Strong Teacher EQ Look Like?
A teacher with strong EQ starts by building an environment that supports emotional safety. This shows up in structures, routines, and the tone of language in the classroom. When students experience consistent and predictable routines, it contributes to the safety that drives engagement in learning. When a student does not have to wonder what’s next or prepare for surprises or disruptions, they are able to focus on instruction and learning.
Teachers create such predictability through actions such as sharing schedules and reviewing them collectively, establishing consistent routines for transitions, and providing reminders of what is coming up. This looks different in a 1st grade classroom versus a 10th grade classroom, but the developmental need for that structure remains the same. Such predictability does not mean every day looks the same and every student acts the same. However, an environment that offers enough predictability to ensure a student does not have to put energy into navigating disruption or surprise creates the safety that then allows for the focus, engagement, and risk-taking that comes with rich learning experiences.
Students rely on a teacher’s awareness of and response to their emotions to create an environment that optimizes learning.
None of this happens by chance. It has to be carefully designed and implemented on a daily basis by the teacher. Part of the design involves employing EQ to ensure the routines and structures are reflective of the strengths and contexts that students bring into the classroom. Teacher EQ includes awareness of how students function best within the dynamic of the classroom community. Who thrives when they are given a specific responsibility within a routine? Who are your leaders when it comes to certain transitions?
Teacher EQ also encompasses cultural awareness. Students bring many assets to the classroom from their families, communities, and cultures. Teachers’ awareness of these assets can strengthen the entire classroom culture. For example, a teacher might plan to have a peace corner in the classroom for students to go to when they need to emotionally regulate. But that is not how every student regulates, and it is not how every culture understands regulation. Indigenous communities, for example, do not think about regulation as driven by the “self,” but instead always in relationship and in service to the entire community (Tsethlikai et al., 2018). A teacher with strong EQ takes all of this context into account when designing the structure and routines that drive the predictability that supports students’ sense of safety.
The Emotionally Regulated Teacher
Designing for emotional safety is one challenge, but implementing this design with consistency and discipline is an entirely different challenge. This requires another critical component of EQ: A teacher’s own emotional regulation.
A regulated classroom relies on the emotional regulation of the teacher. It is worth repeating that this goes well beyond the typical demands for adult regulation, or even those of a parent. Any parent can understand the challenges of managing their own emotions and those of their children. What parent hasn’t experienced the morning meltdown when running late? But even more intense demands are placed on educators.
This starts with the teacher’s voice, which is a critical component of a safe learning environment. Tone matters greatly. A calm and assertive tone communicates to students that the adult they rely on is in a regulated state and has command of the classroom. Both these descriptors matter in a classroom, given the teacher’s responsibility for their own individual regulation and the regulation of the classroom community. A calm tone communicates that the teacher is regulated. A raised tone, an angry tone, or even an excited tone can all convey escalation, which messages to the students that something is creating this escalated state and that their safety might be in question. An assertive tone, meanwhile, communicates that the teacher has a confident hold on the classroom, creating a sense that students are cared for and safe. This feeds into a virtuous cycle where the teacher’s tone guides a regulated classroom, making it less likely for escalation at the classroom level, including the adult.
Teachers have to leverage their EQ to support regulation not just at the classroom level, but in relationship with individual students. Students are inevitably going to experience conditions that put them into a state of emotional dysregulation, whether related to a conflict with peers, difficulty with a task, or challenges they are going through outside of school.
Across development, from early childhood through adolescence, students often need the support of a caring adult in order to move from states of emotional dysregulation to regulated states. Co-regulation is in fact a central developmental need. Just as we scaffold reading instruction to meet the developmental needs of a student, co-regulation provides the support and scaffolding for the developing brain. The calm and validating presence of a caring adult helps a child or adolescent move from a state of emotional escalation and feeling of unsafety to one of support and safety.
But every individual is different. We know that children develop academic skills at different rates and require different levels of support. Emotional development is no different. Some students will regulate individually through tools and activities offered in the classroom (like the peace corner). Others will need much more support through co-regulation. This might take the shape of redirection, breathing together, or validation of what the student is feeling to help them move from feeling unseen and unsafe to understood and supported. A teacher with high EQ will understand the unique needs of their students and respond with appropriate individualized support.
Putting EQ into Practice
All of this likely resonates and sounds great in theory, but where are the supports to help teachers put this into practice? Like any skill set, EQ requires training, practice, and support. One of the more frustrating experiences for educators is hearing about all this guidance from research with little to no concrete support for bringing it to life in a classroom or school.
One school I had the privilege of supporting in my work at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative took the leap from research to practice into their own hands. As we were building our whole child approach at CZI, Van Ness Elementary in Washington, D.C., became a model for how the science of whole child development can become actionable in the design and practice of a school. With founding principal Cynthia Robinson-Rivers at the helm, the team at Van Ness spent years developing strong, research-based practices that center the science of relationships and EQ for both teachers and students. They worked with Transcend Education, another CZI partner, to codify and structure these practices (www.wholechildmodel.org/care).
The resources created in this partnership are organized around the CARE model, which provides Tier 1, or schoolwide, support for student and educator well-being, and include concrete guidance for developing routines and language for a regulated classroom. They include a robust set of songs, physical movements, and activities that help the classroom community establish trust and connection through eye contact, touch, and play. Such routines set the brain and body up for learning. The CARE model also offers guidance for designing classrooms that are grounded in the science of learning, including details for soft and warm lighting and reduced clutter and visual stimulation to help students focus and regulate. There are also Tier 2 and 3 supports (the BOOST model) to help students with additional needs in smaller groups and one-to-one formats.
The Van Ness team worked with Transcend Education to ensure the resources are not only grounded in research, but, just as important, are practical and feasible for educators to implement. Like any effective curriculum or intervention, supporting the EQ of students and teachers requires intentional use of time and talent and clear guidance for consistent implementation. Van Ness’s strategies—like Strong Start, which details consistent morning routines for students, or Structured Recess, which leverages time for students to build EQ skills through play—give teachers actionable tools to support regulation and safety that are tied to the school’s distinct context.
The tools work because the school’s leadership has prioritized professional development and coaching time for this work through an approach that recognizes that a shift in mindset is as important as skill development. Teachers are engaged in inclusive professional development activities that foster the same trust and safety that students need. This school’s approach to PD does not call for immediate broad change, but embraces piloting, iterating, and practicing. It aims to foster a growth mindset and a sense of ownership among teachers.
Emotional regulation is not a limitless resource. Individuals working on developing their EQ often experience a fatigue effect.
Taking Care of Our Teachers Matters
The impact of strong teacher EQ is clear in the research and validated in the results of schools like Van Ness that prioritize this skill. In 2022, Van Ness had a 98 percent student satisfaction index and a 95 percent parent satisfaction rating. (Through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Transcend is exploring the impact of Van Ness’s practices on academic outcomes.) District of Columbia Public Schools has expanded Van Ness’s whole child model to 25 percent of its elementary schools.
Doing this work well requires a strong commitment to taking care of our teachers. We cannot support whole child development without supporting whole adults, and that means prioritizing the emotional health of our teachers. The most recent findings from the RAND Corporation’s State of the American Teacher survey show that teacher rates of stress have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but are still higher than those for the broader population of working Americans (Doan et al., 2023). This is of particular concern given the findings that show stress is the strongest driver of teacher attrition and that less than half of teachers who have access to mental health and well-being resources report such resources to be adequate.
There’s also the complicating factor that the more our teachers are applying EQ in the classroom, the more support they need. Emotional regulation is not a limitless resource. Individuals working on developing their EQ often experience a fatigue effect—they hit a threshold in their capacity to regulate and need to restore and renew this resource. Teachers need support from their peers and leaders to renew their capacity and development, which can be effectively addressed through creative and intentional approaches to scheduling and structures for collaboration. Like the strategies outlined here, this requires dedicated attention and resources to effectively implement.
Support for teachers will continue to be a significant need in our schools as teachers work with students amid ongoing social crises, particularly in the case of students who are experiencing trauma. Trauma may be brought on by multiple causes, but at its core, trauma is caused by disruption. We have all experienced the collective trauma caused by the disruption of the pandemic, while many have suffered from experiences of racial injustice and discrimination. Teachers are being asked to support students who are often in that dysregulated state caused by feelings of unsafety. As adults support students with significant emotional needs, they are exposed to secondary trauma. This is the stress that results from proximity and empathy for another human being’s—especially a child’s—pain or suffering. Secondary trauma creates emotional distress that must be addressed. If our teachers are taking care of our children’s emotional needs, we owe it to our teachers to care for them.
Fortunately, there are inspiring organizations today that focus directly on the emotional health and development of our teachers. The Teaching Well aims to boost adult wellness in schools by centering equity through professional development, coaching, and deep analysis of staff strengths and needs. FuelEd provides different levels of professional development and training grounded in the science of relationships to help educators strengthen how they engage with other adults and students.
Strong educator EQ matters for the health, learning, and development of our students and our educators. Yet it is not easy to prioritize. It takes commitment and work to allocate the resources, identify effective structures and strategies, and implement them with consistency and rigor. The good news is, we have compelling evidence from learning science that it matters and a growing community of partners and organizations offering effective support. When it comes to resource allocation, these practical resources to support educator EQ should be at the top of school and system leaders’ list of priorities.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ How well does your school or district do in providing students a sense of physical and emotional safety? What improvements could be made?
➛ How important do you think emotional regulation is as a characteristic of teacher quality? Does it get enough attention?
➛ What steps could instructional leaders take to better support teachers in developing EQ and creating responsive learning environments for students?
