Well-being and learning, connected

Social-emotional development helps create the trusting, connected environment in which intellectual curiosity, collaboration, and meaningful learning can flourish.

Our approach brings together social-emotional learning, counseling, and learning support across Preschool, Elementary, and Middle School. Teachers, specialists, and school leaders collaborate to understand students’ academic, social, emotional, and developmental growth as interconnected.

Building emotional intelligence

Social-emotional learning is woven throughout the PKS experience, shaping how students learn, build relationships, navigate challenges, and participate in their community. RULER, our school-wide framework for social-emotional learning, gives students and adults a shared language and tools to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate emotions.

Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, RULER is an evidence-based approach to building emotional intelligence. PKS educators and Wellness Team members have trained to bring RULER tools and practices into classrooms across the school.

Learning support and differentiation

Students bring different strengths, interests, and readiness to their learning. Teachers and learning specialists collaborate to understand each student as a learner and provide the right balance of challenge, strategy, and support for continued growth.

This may mean extending learning for a student ready to go deeper, introducing a new approach to a difficult concept, strengthening executive-function skills, or providing targeted individual or small-group support.

Our team brings expertise in:

• Academic enrichment and extension
• Literacy and math
• Executive functioning
• Multisensory approaches to learning
• Individual and small-group support
• Consultation with teachers and families

When a student’s needs call for expertise or services beyond what PKS provides, we can also help families identify appropriate outside resources, providers, or assessments.

Growing together

Wellness looks different at three, eight, and thirteen. Our Preschool through Grade 8 model allows our multidisciplinary Wellness Team to collaborate across divisions and provide continuity as students encounter new developmental stages, relationships, opportunities, and academic expectations.

Over time, we want students to know themselves increasingly well: to understand their emotions, advocate for what they need, develop healthy relationships, pursue their strengths and interests, and recognize the strategies and resources that help them learn and grow.

Families are essential partners in this work. Through consultation, educational programming, resources, and ongoing communication, we work together to support students’ social, emotional, and learning development.