Social Emotional Learning Apps and Student Wellbeing.
School Data Leadership · Learning & Wellbeing
Social-emotional learning resources help schools make time for the skills students use every day: understanding emotions, building relationships, managing challenges, and making thoughtful decisions. Digital apps and curricula can give educators practical ways to teach and practice these skills—and information that helps them plan support.
Why these resources matter
Learning involves more than mastering academic content. Students also need opportunities to ask for help, work with others, navigate disagreement, and develop a sense of belonging. The CASEL framework organizes social-emotional learning (SEL) around self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making, with connections across classrooms, schools, families, and communities.
The resources below offer different ways to bring this work into classroom routines, advisory periods, small groups, and family activities. Some provide teacher-led lessons; others use stories, games, reflection, or interactive practice. Their value depends on how educators use them within caring relationships and a coordinated approach to student support.
Explore the apps and programs
These 13 resources appear in the SDLA Social / Emotional Learning systems directory. They include curricula and instructional resources as well as apps; their features and data collection differ. SDLA does not endorse or resell the products listed.
7 Mindsets
7 Mindsets offers mindset-based learning for PK–12, alongside wellness resources and professional learning for educators. Schools can use its offerings to organize instruction around personal growth, relationships, and school culture. Explore 7 Mindsets.
AIM Buddy Project
This supplemental curriculum pairs students across grades for activities featuring characters from PBS’s Arthur. Interactive stories and games encourage discussion of empathy, honesty, forgiveness, generosity, and learning from others. View the SDLA listing.
Better Kids
Better Kids creates Wisdom: The World of Emotions, a play-based emotional learning app for children ages 4–8. Its interactive adventures introduce emotional learning through experiences designed for young children. Explore Better Kids.
Better Together Cubed
Better Together Cubed combines SEL curriculum, a digital platform, and educator professional development. Its approach connects student skill development with adult learning and family relationships to support a positive school culture. Explore Better Together Cubed.
Brighten Learning
Brighten Learning offers animated, interactive programs addressing social skills, wellbeing, life skills, and career readiness. Its Social Express program supports classroom or individual instruction, with quizzes and progress tracking. Explore Brighten Learning.
Centervention
Centervention provides online, game-based SEL interventions for students in grades K–8. The programs give students opportunities to practice social and emotional skills through interactive experiences. View the SDLA listing.
Harmony Academy / Sanford Harmony
Listed in SDLA as Harmony Academy, Harmony offers classroom curriculum, digital resources, games, and professional learning. Its offerings also include home and out-of-school activities, helping connect relationship-building work across settings. Explore Harmony.
Move This World
Move This World provides PreK–12 curricula focused on mental wellness and social-emotional development. Its resources are designed to fit a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), giving schools material for planned wellbeing instruction. Explore Move This World.
Peekapak
Peekapak offers K–8 SEL curriculum addressing empathy, respect, resilience, and related skills. Its learning resources support instruction in communication, self-regulation, and resolving conflicts. View the SDLA listing.
Ripple Effects
Ripple Effects offers digital programs that personalize skill-building around learners’ strengths and experiences. Its resources support personal growth and resilience across different levels of student support and instructional settings. Explore Ripple Effects.
Second Step
Second Step provides PreK–12 curriculum focused on skills that support relationships, belonging, responsible behavior, and readiness to learn. Schools can use its programs to establish shared language and structured opportunities for practice. Explore Second Step.
The Compassion Project
The Compassion Project introduces elementary students to compassion and ways to practice it. Its focus gives educators a starting point for conversations about understanding others and responding with care. View the SDLA listing.
Wayfinder
Wayfinder combines PreK–12 curriculum, MTSS resources, and insights to support purpose-driven learning. Its offerings span classroom and advisory use, counseling, and college and career preparation. Explore Wayfinder.
What education data teams should consider
An SEL lesson library and an app that stores identifiable student reflections create different data responsibilities. The following are suggested district practices, not claims that every product offers the same features or requires the same information.
- Define the purpose and inputs. Identify whether the school needs lesson access, participation records, skill practice results, or student check-ins. Collect only the information needed for that purpose; a teacher-led activity may not require student accounts.
- Keep rosters and access accurate. Assign responsibility for student identifiers, school and class assignments, staff permissions, and withdrawals. Reconcile imported rosters with the student information system so students and their records reach the correct educators.
- Understand how inputs become results. Ask how responses, observations, or activity records become scores, flags, or recommendations. Preserve the date, instrument, respondent type, and scoring version when comparing results. A student self-report and a teacher observation provide different perspectives.
- Protect personal responses. Review who can see reflections, check-ins, and individual results, including in exports and connected systems. Establish retention and deletion practices, and explain to students and families what is collected and how it will be used.
- Assign the follow-up. If a tool collects requests for help or concerning responses, name the staff who review them, the review schedule, and the referral process. Confirm the handoff is completed rather than assuming a dashboard alert means someone responded.
- Interpret results in context. Lesson completion measures participation; it does not, by itself, establish wellbeing or skill growth. Review missing responses, language accessibility, participation differences, and changes in who was surveyed before interpreting trends. Avoid using a single score to label a student or treating an educational check-in as a diagnosis.
- Share useful, appropriately limited outputs. Use individual information for authorized support and aggregate information for program planning. Protect small groups from identification, and distinguish changes observed during implementation from evidence that the program caused those changes.
A practical starting point is a shared implementation plan owned by instruction, student services, and technology/data staff: what students will experience, what information will be created, who will act on it, and how the school will know whether the work is helping.