Parents and caregivers have become even more important to their children’s education in the past few years, as life in a pandemic required more coordination between home and school due to navigating constant changes. Mariela Chevry, a parent coordinator at P.S. 101Q - The School in the Gardens, is responsible for bridging the gap between school and home life and has made it her mission to prioritize the importance of emotion skills with students and their families. Her incredible work earned her the 2021 Marvin Maurer Award for Outstanding Implementation with Families.
Joining a new staff can be challenging. It means learning about the culture and climate of the school, in addition to finding ways to make meaningful connections. School administrators often set the tone by empowering staff, students, and families and modeling best practices for their school communities. When Mariela joined the staff at P.S. 101Q, her principal did just that for their school. “I saw how passionate she (her principal) was, and I noticed that when we had meetings she would ask, ‘How are you feeling?’ and she really wanted to know,” Mariela explained. The principal’s commitment to the approach and enthusiasm piqued Mariela’s curiosity.
After learning more about RULER, Mariela felt inspired to help students and their families grow emotion skills together. Her first step was to bring the RULER tools and skills into her own home. She wanted her children to be empowered to express their feelings and to feel free to ask her questions. She wanted them to experience the permission to feel, the same permission she was granted by her principal, the permission that she did not have as a child growing up in a culture where expressing emotions was discouraged. Mariela remembers vowing as a child that when she became a parent, she “would not rule with an iron fist.” Even at a young age, she knew that she wanted her children’s experience to be different than her own. RULER provided exactly what she needed to enhance the great relationship she already had with her own children and to allow her to keep the promise she made to herself as a child. With this in mind, she knew that if RULER could open these doors for her, surely it could for other parents.
Mariela with her 2021 Marvin Maurer Award.
One of the goals of P.S. 101Q is to have an emotionally intelligent community that includes educators, staff, students, and their families. Recognizing the impact of bringing RULER into her own home, Mariela set out to reach as many families as possible. Mariela started by partnering with P.S. 101Q’s Parent Association so that families were aware of how RULER was being used with students. “We wanted our children to use what they learn about RULER, not just while they are in our school with us, but to really take it home and exercise what they learn and develop it more.”
A flyer from Mariela’s book club for families
Mariela’s number one goal has always been to educate parents. She firmly believes that the only way for students to learn the skills and tools of emotional intelligence is to practice them both at school and at home. She has found great success in hosting parent workshops where staff members teach families about the RULER skills and approach, the vocabulary they may hear, and the responses they may get to questions they have, based on what their children were learning at school. As more families come on board, Mariela shares more RULER for Families resources and even encourages families to read Permission to Feel as part of her book club for families. Through her leadership, she uncovered how passionate families and caregivers can be about earning an emotion education, while their children are earning theirs.
““Parents didn’t realize that they were helping us meet our goals of having an emotionally intelligent school community by helping themselves.””
Parent Coordinators, like Mariela, are key members of the RULER Implementation Team. RULER works when everyone in a school community shares a common language around emotions. At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we consider Mariela Chevy a leader in the school to-home partnership. When we can bridge what is being done in the classroom and create helpful conversations at home around emotions, families grow together. We are honored to have Mariela Chevry pioneering best practices in this part of our work.