Reading, Writing, and Regulating Emotions

Heather Lyon
Jun 4
5 min read

Hello,

If you’re not familiar with the phrase “new math,” it’s the way many parents refer to how students today are taught math. The modern approach prioritizes the why behind the how. This is fundamentally different from how folks like me learned math. Like most people of a certain age, I was raised in the era of computation and memorization. When the approach to math instruction changed, parents and teachers had some feelings about it.

With this in mind, I’d like you to pause for a moment and ask yourself:

What are your feelings about “new math?”

Since we’ll circle back to that later, it’s important for you to really respond to the question—and remember your answer.

Changing the Bar in Math and Reading

Over the past several years, we’ve reimagined how students learn math and reading. In math, we’ve shifted away from memorizing procedures toward understanding place value, number sense, and mathematical reasoning. Students are encouraged to ask why, not just how.

In literacy, the movement toward the science of reading has brought explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding to the forefront. Children are no longer encouraged to use pictures to guess words but instead use the sounds in the letters to determine what the word says.

Visit a kindergarten classroom today, and you might hear a student confidently explain that a rhombus has two pairs of parallel sides or that “qu” is two letters but only one sound. These aren’t just cute moments—they’re signs of deep understanding. This is a major departure from how I was taught. If you’re like me, you were told to divide fractions using the rhyme, “When dividing fractions, don’t ask why—just invert and multiply.” There was no conceptual understanding—just a catchy directive that actively discouraged thinking. Yet many adults still respond to modern math or literacy instruction with a familiar tone: an exasperated “Ah, nuts!” rather than a delighted “Ahhhh, nuts!” (like in the new Planters commercials).

The implication is that this approach feels unnecessarily complicated. Call me crazy, but I wish I had been taught to understand the why behind what I was learning. I view “new math” with admiration, not irritation.

While this new approach is a shift from the way we learned, different doesn’t mean worse. In fact, these changes reflect decades of research and a collective commitment to raising the bar for what students can understand and do. I am awed by the intentional desire to have students truly think about what they are learning.

But What About SEL?

That’s what makes the contrast with social-emotional learning (SEL) so striking.

A few years ago, I read Marc Brackett’s book Permission to Feel, and it transformed how I think about emotions. Brackett introduces the Mood Meter, a simple yet powerful tool that maps feelings along two axes: pleasant vs. unpleasant and high vs. low energy.

The Mood Meter is elegant and effective. Yet I didn’t fully grasp the challenge of naming emotions until a therapist once asked me how I felt, and I answered, “I think…” She gently reminded me that thoughts and feelings are not the same. It was a wake-up call: if I, a self-reflective adult, struggle to name my emotions, how much harder must it be for children?

We wouldn’t expect students to master long division or vowel teams without instruction. Yet when it comes to SEL, that’s exactly what we often do. We say things like “You’re okay” or “Brush it off” to children experiencing unpleasant emotions. Sometimes we ask, “What’s wrong?”—but we haven’t given children the language to name their feelings or the strategies to self-soothe. We expect students to regulate emotions, navigate conflict, manage stress, and express themselves—but we rarely provide the same level of structure and support that we offer in academic subjects.

There are broad goals around SEL and good intentions, but no equivalent to Common Core standards or an explicit scope and sequence. In many schools, SEL is reduced to a quick advisory lesson, a motivational poster, or a slide deck with emojis. Even more challenging: the adults themselves may not have the language or strategies to model the very things we’re asking of children.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for SEL to be tested or letter-graded. I am saying we need to approach SEL with the same seriousness and intentionality we bring to academic instruction. After all, SEL isn’t just helpful—it’s foundational.

Strong SEL skills enhance academic performance. A student running late on an assignment might use emotional regulation to manage feelings of overwhelm. A worker facing a tight deadline can draw on time management and stress reduction strategies. Struggling with a group project? Empathy and self-awareness make all the difference. These are SEL skills that improve learning in any setting, content area, and age.

Yes, math and reading are essential life skills—we use them every day. Still, let’s be honest: I haven’t solved a trigonometry problem since high school, and I’ve never curled up with Shakespeare on a rainy day. That doesn’t diminish their value, but it does put them in context. Much of academic content is important, but some of it is “nice to know” rather than “need to know.”

In contrast, SEL has no ceiling. The better we are at understanding our emotions, managing stress, and building relationships, the better we function—in school, at work, in parenting, and in everyday life. There’s no point at which strong SEL skills become irrelevant or unnecessary.

Circling Back to “New Math”

So, back to that first question:

What are your feelings about “new math”?

Did you notice a feeling? Were you able to name it? Or did your mind immediately offer a thought or opinion instead?

If you didn’t name a feeling, you’re not alone—and you just proved my point about why SEL instruction is so necessary. If you were able to, you experienced SEL in action—being aware of your emotions, labeling them, and understanding how they show up in your thinking.

Unfortunately, while we’ve systematized how we teach students to solve math problems or decode complex texts, we often leave their emotional development to chance. It’s time to change that. Let’s give SEL what we’ve already given math and reading: clear expectations, consistent instruction, and high standards. Why? Because knowing how you feel—and how to respond to those feelings—is just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Honestly, I feel like that’s where the real learning begins.

~Heather

P.S. Distinguishing between thoughts and feelings can be tricky. My Catch of the Week is Kayla McGee’s helpful video, “Thoughts vs. Feelings,” which explains the difference between the two. Let me know what you think!