Calm, Capable Kids in Community
Written by Tim Buckley, June 2025
Grassroots leaders living in Salem-Keizer neighborhoods where families face the most adversity tell us that to improve children’s success at school we first have to deal with the issues of neighborhood safety and housing security. Children don’t learn well if their basic needs for safety and housing aren’t met.
CBEL – through its five Neighborhood Family Councils (NFC) – is helping to improve students’ academic experience by:
Promoting neighborhood safety and community violence prevention
Promoting housing stability and home ownership, and
Partnering with teachers to teach children social and emotional skills as well as how to read, write, and do arithmetic.
In September, the bond between schools and families will strengthen even more as the RULER program expands to more classrooms and CBEL brings the program into neighboring family homes. Yale University (creator of the RULER program) is thrilled.
Part of the challenge facing schools is that kids arrive socially and emotionally challenged. And truthfully, teachers and other staff also suffer stress in that environment.
In the Schools. The RULER program, pioneered at Cummings Elementary (one of CBEL’s neighborhoods) has lit up the radar of the School District because it brings an important calming element into the school environment. Students and staff are encouraged to increase their awareness about emotions and then learn ways to help regulate them in times of heightened stress. As outlined in an earlier article, periodic mindfulness breaks in the school’s Wellness Learning Center (Center) allow students and staff to downregulate when stressed.
The Center’s onsite staff helps emotionally charged students to identify what feelings they’re experiencing using the wall-mounted Mood Meter. They have a variety of deregulation tools for use - from music and a mini trampoline to lap-sized sandboxes, listening buddies, art supplies, body socks, a tent and lots of calming books in their library. “The Meta Moment” practice helps students and adults to pause when triggered, learn to reflect, consider, strategize and respond instead of merely react. “It allows us to connect with our ‘best’ self and respond in a way that aligns with our values and goals,” said Principal Andy Kronser.
Just in the month of May, the Center (WLC) logged 450 visits from 167 students, and that’s a bit above the average number of visits each month. “The WLC helps me go to the green zone”, said one 2nd grader. “Recently, the WLC helped me not be mad,” said a 3rd grader.
Andy Kronser (left) with Keizer Mayor Cathy Clark and NFC Initiative Director Eduardo Angulo at Cumming’s Winterfest in 2025
Kronser recalled an occasion last fall when a male parent called him, all upset about his child, a student at Cummings. The student had apparently told dad about an experience in the Wellness Learning Center. The dad was upset because he thought helping kids with emotional literacy was a waste of time; the child should instead be learning the basics, he said. “But that all changed,” Kronser said. “The dad came to me this year and said that the RULER program has made a huge difference in his child, and that the child had experienced ‘the best year of school ever!’ Now, he’s an avid promoter of the program!”
In the Neighborhoods. Meanwhile, eight CBEL folks (staff and Neighborhood Family Council members) will receive RULER training that will take the program deeper into the community. As trainers from Willamette Education Service District roll out RULER to teachers throughout Salem and Keizer this fall, CBEL will take RULER principles and techniques in into its five neighborhoods. “Basically, it’s a ‘train-the-trainer’ model,” Kronser added, “that will benefit families who are also experiencing stress. If parents learn these same skills, their children will be the immediate beneficiaries.”
Yale University, where the RULER program was developed, agrees with Kronser.
“When families learn and practice RULER alongside schools, students experience a consistent, reinforced message across home and school. That alignment helps students apply the skills more deeply,” said Miriam Korangy, Director of Strategic School Partnerships at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
“It also strengthens the partnership between schools and families,” she continued. “Parents feel more equipped and connected to what’s happening in classrooms, and it becomes a shared effort to support student well-being.”
Korangy added, “Community-based efforts like this also create space for culturally relevant adaptations and neighborhood-led leadership, making the work more sustainable and resonant over time. And importantly, they contribute to a broader emotional climate shift — not just in schools, but in homes and across neighborhoods.”
RULER is an acronym that represents five key emotional intelligence skills: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. CBEL’s Neighborhood Family Councils will usher RULER principles into practice in at least two ways:
Classes offered free to parents
Teaching in the context of the popular Infant & Toddler Playgroup
Classes. Neighborhood Family Councils have offered classes in
Parenting
Stress reduction
Difficult conversations
Financial health
When any of these free classes are offered again, RULER concepts will be included in the teaching and practice, especially the first three listed above. To make it easier for working parents to attend, a dinner meal is shared and childcare is provided.
Highland Infant-Toddler-Kindrgarten Play Group
Neighborhood Infant-Toddler Playgroups. CBEL’s first group was hosted in the evening in the Highland neighborhood, at the Salem Evangelical Church. As with classes, a dinner meal was shared before activities began.
Children benefit in these ways:
Social development, interacting with peers, learning to share and resolve conflicts
Preparation for formal learning through structured activities with parents
Space to play while developing cognitive and physical skills
Parents benefit in these ways:
Social support and networking – reducing isolation, improving mental health
Learning new parenting strategies and gaining insights into their child’s development
Bonding with their children in fun ways.
“While attendance at the start was disappointing, word of mouth from those who attended helped attract other families,” said Rick Newton, CBEL’s Training and Development Consultant. “By May, we regularly hosted about 12 families, numbering between 40 and 50 people including children.”
The Marion-Polk Early Learning Hub, one of CBEL’s Impact Initiative partners, has committed to funding another Infant Toddler Play Group starting in the fall. “The Cummings Neighborhood Family Council agreed to host it, in partnership with the Kennedy Neighborhood Family Council, at Cummings Elementary…largely because the RULER program began there and that will give us a more tangible opportunity to connect the efforts of the school with those in the surrounding neighborhoods,” Newton added.
Whitney with her 3 kids
“The families become the heroes in their own stories, as well as ours,” said Whitney Contreras, who co-facilitates the Infant-Toddler Playgroup. “Play between parents and their children is natural and fun, and it can become as easy and casual as saying hello.”
Principal Kronser, who just received a promotion as Director of Elementary Education for the School District, said, “As a new parent, the Infant-Toddler Playgroup is a useful way to become friends with, and learn from, others who have more child-raising experience.”
“CBEL’s efforts to knit neighborhoods and schools closer together is important,” he added, “and every school needs these outside partnerships to enhance the school’s ability to reach deeper into the neighborhood surrounding the school.”