Updated: This article has been updated to include information from a recent court ruling.
In the first episode of the popular Netflix series “Adolescence,” an armed task force bursts into the bedroom of fresh-faced 13-year-old Jamie, arresting him on charges of murdering a female classmate. As the stunned adolescent sits up in bed, framed against a backdrop of space-themed wallpaper, he appears barely to have entered puberty—and hardly capable of murdering someone with a kitchen knife.
The series grapples with a question: How could a young teen from a seemingly stable family be charged with the murder of his classmate—and who really is to blame? Is it the parents, as indicated by a gripping scene later on in the series in which the boy’s father sobs and blames himself?
Although parents obviously bear some responsibility in raising children to treat others with respect and to recognize when their emotional struggles warrant intervention, experts say that teachers, school-based mental health professionals, and strong partnerships between families and schools play significant roles, too.
Now, more than ever before, resources exist to support educators not only in identifying when students are struggling emotionally, but to incorporate into the daily curriculum social-emotional learning practices that are proven to have a positive effect on students’ healthy behaviors and academic achievement.
But as Marc Brackett, Robin Stern, and Diana Divecha, from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, observe in an EdWeek opinion piece on the Netflix series, “Even caring adults often struggle to detect and interrupt the harm happening around them.”
Obstacles to incorporating social-emotional learning into the classrooms of adolescents can exacerbate these struggles.
Teachers play a key role in identifying students who are struggling
Intuitively, teachers are uniquely positioned to recognize when a student is struggling emotionally, perhaps even more so than a pediatrician or a parent, said Jennifer Greif Green, a child clinical psychologist.
“They watch students carefully, often every day over a nine-month period, so they’re pretty good at recognizing when a student changes,” said Green, a professor in special education at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. “That’s different from pediatricians, who often only see a student once or sometimes twice a year.”
Teachers’ access to a large sample size of children also helps them recognize when a student may be struggling with mental health issues.
“They can compare a student to 20 or 30 other children who are in the same age bracket and operating in the same context,” said Green. “That’s different from parents or family members, who often don’t have the opportunity to see how their child compares to others.”
But beyond the early elementary grades, teachers’ training on how to educate students holistically tends to wane—just when the complex social and emotional challenges of adolescence emerge, Green said.
“We expect early childhood educators to think about the whole child. They’re working with students on foundational academic skills, but they’re also doing a lot of work with students around social relationships: how to interact with one another, how we walk about the classroom and spend our day in schools interacting with one another,” Green said.
Teachers of older students are less likely to see imparting foundational social-emotional skills as part of their core function as educators, Green said, despite the clear need for it.
“The social and emotional needs of students don’t go away after early childhood,” she said. “Mental health problems and a lot of social and emotional concerns actually become more complex as our children enter adolescence and move toward young adulthood.”
Social-emotional learning is under fire
Today, resources exist to support teachers’ continued use of social-emotional learning lessons beyond the early elementary grades, and a growing body of evidence shows their effectiveness.
For instance, a 2023 global meta-analysis covering more than 400 studies from 53 countries found that SEL programs have a significant positive impact on academic outcomes, healthy behaviors, feelings of safety and school climate, as well as decreased suicide ideation, and teacher efficacy.
But the label SEL has come under fire recently.
The U.S. Department of Education, under President Donald Trump, has accused schools of using social-emotional learning to mask discrimination in schools. (A federal judge on April 24, however, ruled that the Trump administration had overstepped its authority in “proclaim[ing] entire categories of classroom content discriminatory.”)
This scrutiny has been building for years: During the pandemic, critics claimed SEL brought “divisive” subjects such as critical race theory into the classroom, and they advocated for its removal. In 2023, bills in at least eight states aimed to ban or limit SEL, according to the American Psychological Association, which defines SEL as “teaching students interpersonal skills and how to understand, control, and express their emotions.”
The practices of SEL have been in schools for decades under different names—from “whole child education” to “character development"—according to the APA.
Karen VanAusdal, vice president of practice at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, said while there’s no one “right” way to teach SEL, schools in states that invest in clear standards and professional learning related to SEL are more likely to embed the practice into daily school life.
“We [at CASEL] think that the best version of SEL is woven into the fabric of the whole school,” VanAusdal said. “That means students are learning social and emotional skills not only during a specific lesson, but also through how teachers interact with them, and how classrooms are managed.”
In this version of SEL, teachers might start mornings with a quick check-in to build relationships; they’re also likely to educate students on skills like managing stress or working through conflict, VanAusdal said.
Students need this type of learning during the pressure-filled years of adolescence, said Lakeisha Steele, CASEL’s vice president of policy.
“Preteens and teens are wrestling with complex emotions, identity, and relationships, often while feeling like they have to figure it all out on their own,” Steele said. “SEL gives them the tools to navigate this intense period.”
Partnering with parents adds another layer of support
So, too, do multi-tiered levels of support that include school personnel partnering with parents, according to Peter Faustino, president of the National Association of School Psychologists.
“I think in raising children, everybody needs to be part of the conversation,” he said. “I want to give parents that opportunity to start those conversations [about challenging topics], but I think schools have a responsibility to also be a part of that conversation.”
Keir Rodney Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom, thinks so, too. He publicly supported Netflix’s recent decision to make the British series available for free in secondary schools there.
“It’s a cultural issue, and therefore we’re going to have to look more broadly, work as a society on this, and discuss it, which is why I’m really pleased that ‘Adolescence’ is now going to be shown in schools free because I do think young people should be watching it,” Starmer told the BBC.
Showing tweens and teens “Adolescence” can help jump-start tough but important conversations on subjects, like extreme and misogynistic influences on social media, they may already be grappling with.
But for students to reap the greatest benefit from such conversations, skilled adults should facilitate the dialogue—a task not all parents are equipped to do or comfortable doing.
“I don’t ever want parents to feel as if they are alone in this work,” Faustino said. “Parenting children in this online age is very challenging, … and research consistently demonstrates that a strong home-school partnership benefits students’ school attendance, their academic outcomes, and the school climate.”
