New research from ACT and the American School Counselors Association shows the significant disconnect between school counselors’ desire to support students’ social-emotional development and the tools and resources available to counselors to support that work (“Teaching Social-Emotional Skills Is Hard, Time-Consuming, and Necessary, Report Says,” Nov. 12, 2021).

As we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, social-emotional learning—and related whole-learner approaches to education that support the interconnected development of critical skills—are vitally important both to help students overcome the enormous challenges caused by the pandemic and to build greater resilience in the longterm.