RULER is an acronym for recognizing emotions, understanding them, labelling them, expressing them and regulating them.
Emotions are crucial for everybody. They influence our decisions, our behavior, our work and our relationships. The RULER program devised by Mark Brackett, a psychologist at Yale University helps students, teachers and parents to handle emotions better. It is being used in several schools in US and and has now been introduced in Britain too. It has resulted in better school environments, reduced anxiety and depression, less bullying, less teacher burnout and improved grades too. It uses strategies like labelling and plotting emotions on the ‘mood meter’ everyday. The students plot their emotion, then articulate why they are feeling a certain emotion and explore ways to feel better.