Abstract
The project is a socioemotional learning (SEL) curriculum model based on the 12-Unit RULER Approach for public high schools to reduce disciplinary actions among African American high school students and other high school students of color. The 12-RULER Approach is introduced for a high school curriculum based on “feel words” from a fifth and sixth-grade curriculum. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (2012) continues to show patterns of minority overrepresentation with school discipline (Forsyth et al., 2015). With prior research, the curriculum uses “feeling words” and self-reflective journal entries to build socio-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum program based on the 12-Unit Approach, initially developed for the fifth and sixth-grade curriculum. The Principal Investigator adapted Rivers et al., (2013) 12-Unit RULER Approach that uses a five-step strategy that uses “feeling words” in the methodological procedural design for a high school population.The Principal Investigator adapted a high school 12-Unit RULER Approach curriculum, with the promotion of a five-step intervention program that implements “feel words” in 15–20-minute sessions. The purpose of the procedural design was to develop a high school SEL curriculum program to reduce disciplinary actions among African American high school students and other students of color. RULER builds social and emotional skills by focusing on the teaching and learning of emotion-related concepts or “feeling words” and by introducing tools for leveraging emotions in the learning environment (Rivers, et al., 2013). This adapted intervention also assists high school teachers to effectively understand student emotions through the student’s “feel words” responses in the intervention.