Students

The Heart Curriculum helps students understand what they are feeling, notice changes in their energy and body, and build skills for coping with stress and challenges. Students also learn how to understand others, recognize their strengths, and know when and how to ask for help. Research on social and emotional learning shows that these skills can support students’ well-being, relationships, behavior, and learning.¹

The curriculum grows with students over time, with lessons becoming more reflective and complex as students get older:

• Grades 3–5, Heart Explorers: learn to notice and name emotions, recognize body and energy clues, try different coping tools, understand others, and identify personal strengths.
• Grades 6–8, Heart Navigators: Explore more complex emotions, notice patterns, think about which coping strategies fit different situations, challenge assumptions, and build stronger help-seeking skills.
• Grades 9–12, Heart Stewards:  Reflect more deeply on stress, relationships, coping, perspective-taking, boundaries, resilience, and when to reach out for additional support.

Across every grade level, the goal is not to teach one “right” way to feel or cope. Instead, students build a range of strategies and learn how to choose what may be helpful in different situations.²