The Highest-Leverage Investment for Student Behavior and Engagement

The Highest-Leverage Investment for Student Behavior and Engagement

You are staring at the data. Office referrals are up. Attendance is down. Classroom disruptions are climbing. Students seem harder to reach, harder to settle, harder to engage. You have tried new behavior systems. You have brought in specialists. You have adjusted schedules, restructured classrooms, and purchased programs.

And still. Something is not landing.

Here's the deal... the research, and my own lived experience inside schools, points to the same place every time. The highest-leverage investment for student behavior and engagement is not a new student-facing program. It is the nervous system and patterns of every adult in the building.

I know. That might not be what you were expecting to read. But stay with me, y'all. While my gut told me this was true long before the studies caught up, I am a research nerd at heart and have been quietly geeking out on the data for over a decade. And that's what I'm here to share with you. 

The evidence is deep, longitudinal, and consistent enough that even the most budget-skeptical administrator in the room is going to have a hard time arguing with it. This is not a soft answer. It is a science-backed, data-supported, ROI-positive answer. And by the end of this post, I want you to see exactly why it is true, what it looks like in practice, and what it means for where your professional development dollars should actually go.

The Myth That Is Quietly Costing Schools

There is a persistent myth in education that spending time and money on adult well-being is somehow taking time and money away from students. That professional development focused on how educators' own brains work, what patterns they carry into their classrooms, and how to move from reactive to responsive... is a luxury. A detour from the real work.

And honestly? I get it. Schools are under relentless pressure. Every dollar is scrutinized. Every hour is accounted for. When a principal walks into a room full of educators doing breathwork or reflecting on their own nervous system responses, it can feel like exactly the kind of thing a skeptical board member would question.

Sound familiar?

But here is what that framing gets fundamentally wrong. It assumes that student outcomes and adult well-being are separate investments. They are not. They are the same investment, approached from the most powerful leverage point available. And the evidence for that is no longer thin or emerging. It is deep, longitudinal, and consistent across decades of research.

The Adult IS the Intervention

Let me say that again, because it is the whole post in five words.

The adult IS the intervention.

In 2009, Jennings and Greenberg published what is now considered a landmark paper in education research. Their finding was direct: teacher social-emotional competence is the primary driver of classroom climate and student outcomes. You cannot effectively teach what you are not embodying (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009).

And it has only gotten clearer since then. A 2024 study found that teacher mindfulness directly predicted student mindfulness, empathic concern, and prosocial orientation. Teacher empathic concern predicted student prosocial behavior (Orr & Lavy, 2024). The mechanism is not mysterious. Children are exquisitely attuned to the adults around them. They do not just hear what we teach. They feel who we are.

Pulling from my own experience... I spent years as a teacher and then as a school psychologist watching this play out in real time. I watched educators who were running on empty, doing their absolute best, and still losing ground. Not because they were not trying. Because the gap between their own nervous system state and what their students needed was simply too wide to bridge. And I watched, again and again, what happened when those same educators got real support. Sustained, relational, science-rooted support for their own inner life.

The shift was not subtle. It showed up in their classrooms the next day.

And after seeing this enough times, in enough schools, with enough educators... I stopped being surprised by it. I started building toward it on purpose. Because that is what Constant Love and Learning^© exists to do. To give educators the support I wished I had had during my own years in the classroom and in the field. Before the burnout that eventually changed everything for me.

What the Neuroscience Actually Says

Dr. Bruce Perry's Neurosequential Model gives us the clearest framework for why this is true. A brain in a state of threat or chronic stress cannot access higher-order thinking. The cortex, where reasoning, language, memory consolidation, and learning live, goes offline when a child feels unsafe or dysregulated (Perry, 2006).

So here is what that means in plain terms.

No matter how beautifully designed your curriculum is... no matter how strong your intervention program is... if a child's nervous system is in a state of alarm, the learning cannot reach them.

And the most powerful regulator available to that child is the regulated nervous system of the adult standing in front of them.

This is what we mean at CLL when we say Regulate Before You Educate™. It is not a slogan. It is neuroscience. The adult's regulated, grounded presence creates the neurological conditions that make learning possible. A 2025 study formalized something skilled educators have long known intuitively -  teacher mindfulness translates into three observable behaviors with students: responsive relationships, safe environments, and intentional interactions. All three predict student outcomes (Murray et al., 2025). The pathway from the adult's inner life to the child's experience is real.

And a three-year longitudinal study found that children whose teachers reported sustained higher burnout showed compounding smaller gains in social skills, frustration tolerance, and closeness with teachers, alongside increased conflict, year over year (Stephens et al., 2026). Burnout costs are not just felt by teachers. They accumulate in children across years of schooling.

I think about a teacher I worked with who told me that before working with us at Constant Love and Learning^©, she felt like she was always on edge. She described coming into her classroom braced. Already anticipating the hard moments. Already half-depleted before the first bell rang.

After sustained support through our work together, something fundamental shifted. She started coming at her students with more compassion. More patience. More creativity. When conflict arose with colleagues, she approached those conversations differently too, more curious than defensive, more solution-oriented than self-protective.

And she told me something I carry with me still. Before this work, she was weeks away from leaving the profession. Entirely. 

Now she describes herself as restored. Recharged. Fulfilled. Not just staying in the classroom, but thriving in it. And not just in her own classroom anymore. She has started taking on systems-level work, bringing what she has learned into broader conversations about how her school can do better for all kids.

That is not a feel-good story. That is what regulated adults do. They expand. They innovate. They ripple forward.

From fatigued to fulfilled. And then some.

The Relationship Is the Mechanism

Don't get me wrong, programs matter. Curriculum matters. Systems matter.

But underneath all of it is something more fundamental.

The relationship.

A major second-order meta-analysis published in 2025 synthesized decades of research on teacher-student relationships. The finding? Relationship quality predicts several clusters of student outcomes: Achievement, motivation, engagement, belonging, well-being, and behavior (Emslander et al., 2025).

The relationship is not the soft backdrop to the real work. It is the lever.

And for the students who need it most, that lever matters most. Longitudinal research found that teacher-student relationship quality in early elementary school predicts children's social and academic trajectories years later, with the strongest protective effects for children who entered school with behavioral difficulties (Hughes et al., 2001). The kids who are hardest to reach are the ones most changed by the adult who chooses to reach them anyway. With steadiness. With warmth. With genuine connection.

Decades of resilience research land on the same finding: children who beat the odds had at least one stable, caring adult (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2015). Not a program. An adult. Educators can be that adult. But only if they are supported enough to show up that way.

Are your educators supported enough to be that adult for the kids who need them most?

The ROI Case: What This Looks Like in Real Numbers

Now, I know some of you are reading this and thinking, this all sounds beautiful, Katie. And also... my budget committee meets next Tuesday.

So let's talk numbers.

Teacher retention. K-12 workers have the highest occupational burnout rate of any sector in America. Fifty-two percent of teachers report feeling burned out always or very often (Gallup, 2022). Educators with poor well-being are significantly more likely to intend to leave (Doan et al., 2023). And the financial cost of losing them is significant. The Learning Policy Institute estimates teacher turnover costs districts between $9,000 and $21,000 per teacher when you factor in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and the loss of institutional knowledge, and that figure compounds when multiple educators leave in the same year. Want to see what that looks like for your district specifically? The Learning Policy Institute has a turnover cost calculator I love to share and worth bookmarking: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/the-real-cost-of-teacher-turnover. Investing in adult well-being is a retention investment with a measurable return.

Fewer referrals and crises. When educators develop stronger regulatory capacity and emotional awareness, reactive moments decrease. Escalations decrease. A mindfulness-based professional development program for teachers produced sustained reductions in psychological distress and sustained gains in emotion regulation nearly ten months after the program ended (Jennings et al., 2019). Fewer escalations means fewer office referrals, fewer crisis interventions, and reduced demand on behavioral specialists, administrators, and support staff. That is time and money returned to the system.

Stronger Tier 1, with less need for Tier 2 and 3. When regulated adults create regulated classrooms, the foundation of your MTSS pyramid gets stronger. Fewer students need intensive intervention when the universal environment is genuinely safe and connected. Investing in adult capacity is one of the most direct Tier 1 strengthening strategies available. And one of the most underutilized.

Academic outcomes. A 2025 meta-analysis of over 33,000 students across twelve countries found that universal SEL programs significantly improved both literacy and math achievement (Ha et al., 2025). And the primary determinant of whether those gains materialized? Teacher implementation quality. Not the program. The teacher. A 2024 systematic review of 90 studies found the strongest outcomes when educators were the implementors, not external specialists (Cipriano et al., 2024). We can of course provided support from those school-based mental health professionals, and we also need to ensure we've adequately supported the feeling-first responders - the educators on the frontlines in our classrooms.

Leadership compounds everything. A 2025 study found that principal social-emotional competence and well-being form the foundation from which school climate, teacher functioning, and student outcomes flow (Mahfouz et al., 2025). And the research is clear on why that foundation matters so much: principals are the single most influential factor shaping student learning, teacher retention, and school climate, with their impact landing primarily through how they support, develop, and create conditions for their teachers (Darling-Hammond et al., 2026; Leithwood et al., 2008). The adult-first argument applies at every level of the system. When you invest in your leaders and their nervous systems and patterns, the investment multiplies through every layer beneath them.

A principal I have had the privilege of working with described something that has stayed with me. After sustained support for her staff (and herself) through our partnership, she said it was the strongest, calmest start to a school year she had experienced in all her years as an administrator. Leader steadier. Staff steadier. Students steadier. The culture shifted because the people shifted, from the inside out. A steadier start led to a steadier year filled with better outcomes.

That is the ripple. Right there.

What Effective Investment Actually Looks Like

So what does this actually look like in practice? Because here is the thing about professional development...

Not all of it is created equal. Not even close.

A landmark review from the Learning Policy Institute identified the characteristics of PD that actually produces lasting change: content-focused, active rather than passive, collaborative, embedded in practice, and sustained over time (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). One-day workshops, even excellent ones, consistently fail to produce lasting behavioral change. The ROI of sustained, relational, embedded adult learning is categorically different from the return on a compliance-based training day.

This is why at Constant Love and Learning^©, every engagement is designed as a relationship first and a scope of work second. We never walk in with a canned program. We ask what your school needs, what your people are carrying, and what conditions need to shift for educators to show up as the best of themselves... not just what is left of themselves. Then we build from there. In doable doses. Sustained over time. Rooted in the science of how adult nervous systems actually change.

The Both/And That Changes Everything

Here is what I want you to hold as you close this tab and head back into your day.

Investing in adult well-being and investing in student outcomes are not competing priorities. They never were. They are the same investment, viewed from the angle that actually produces change.

When you help educators understand their own nervous systems, unpack the patterns they carry, and move from reactive to responsive... you are not doing something instead of serving students. You are doing the thing that makes serving students possible. Sustainably. Skillfully. With genuine connection and joy still intact.

My well-being spreads well-being. That is not a bumper sticker. It is the whole argument.

The most student-centered thing a school can do is invest in its adults.

And the data, the neuroscience, and the lived experience of educators whose careers and whose love for this work have been genuinely restored... all point to the same conclusion.

This is not a detour from the mission. This is the most direct path to it.

One breath, one feeling, one HEARTbeat at a time.

Start Here. Today.

If this landed for you, I want to make the next step easy. Really easy.

First, a quick win for you. Because y'all, we cannot pour from an empty cup, and the research is clear that your own nervous system regulation is where this all begins. Grab our free Self-Compassion Break Poster, a simple, science-rooted practice you can use in under two minutes, for yourself or with your staff.

Download the Free Self-Compassion Break Poster

And when you are ready to zoom out and look at the whole system... the WholeHEARTed School Audit is your next step. It is a free diagnostic that helps you see exactly where your school stands across the conditions that make adult and student thriving possible. You will walk away with a picture of what is working, what needs attention, and where the highest-leverage investment is for your specific community.

Take the Free WholeHEARTed School Audit

Just a couple minutes to get curious and get a real look at what your school needs, and a place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the highest-leverage investment for improving student behavior and engagement?
The research consistently points to one answer: investing in the regulated, self-aware capacity of the adults in the building. Teacher social-emotional competence is the primary driver of classroom climate and student outcomes. When educators move from reactive to responsive, students feel it immediately, in the emotional climate of the classroom, in the quality of their relationships with teachers, and in their own capacity to settle and learn.

How does teacher burnout affect students?
Research shows that chronic teacher stress transmits into classroom climate through what researchers call physiological and relational contagion. Children in classrooms with burned-out teachers show higher rates of anxiety, aggression, and academic difficulty. A three-year longitudinal study found that children whose teachers reported sustained higher burnout showed compounding smaller gains in social skills, frustration tolerance, and closeness with teachers year over year. Burnout costs do not stay with the teacher. They accumulate in children.

What does it cost schools when teachers burn out and leave?
The Learning Policy Institute estimates teacher turnover costs districts between $9,000 and $21,000 per teacher when you factor in recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and the loss of institutional knowledge. That figure compounds when multiple educators leave in the same year. You can see what those numbers look like for your specific district using the Learning Policy Institute's free turnover cost calculator at learningpolicyinstitute.org.

Why does teacher well-being affect student behavior?
Teachers are the primary regulatory environment for students during the school day. Research shows that a regulated adult nervous system creates the neurological conditions for learning, connection, and self-regulation in children. When educators are chronically stressed or burned out, that stress transmits into the classroom through emotional climate, reduced warmth, and increased reactive responses, all of which directly affect student behavior and engagement.

How does teacher-student relationship quality affect student outcomes?
A major second-order meta-analysis published in 2025 found that teacher-student relationship quality predicts several clusters of student outcomes including achievement, motivation, engagement, belonging, well-being, and behavior. For students who entered school with behavioral difficulties, strong teacher relationships had the most powerful protective effects. Decades of resilience research confirm the same finding: children who beat the odds had at least one stable, caring adult. Teachers can be that adult, especially when they’ve been supported to be their best selves.

Is adult-focused professional development really student-centered?
Yes. Decades of research across neuroscience, developmental psychology, and education confirm that the adult is the primary mechanism through which student outcomes are shaped. Supporting educators' nervous systems, self-awareness, and relational capacity is not separate from student-centered work. It is the foundation of it. The most student-centered thing a school can do is invest in its adults.

REFERENCES

Cipriano, C., Ha, C., Wood, M., Sehgal, K., Ahmad, E., & McCarthy, M. F. (2024). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of universal school-based SEL programs in the United States: Considerations for marginalized students. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 3, 100029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2024.100029

Darling-Hammond, L., Fitz, J., Giani, M. V., Gordon, M. F., & Wechsler, M. (2026). The principal effect: How investing in school leaders is key to solving education's challenges. Learning Policy Institute. https://doi.org/10.54300/644.197

Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report

Doan, S., Steiner, E. D., Pandey, R., & Woo, A. (2023). Teacher well-being and intentions to leave: Findings from the 2023 State of the American Teacher survey (Research Report RR-A1108-8). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-8.html

Emslander, V., Holzberger, D., Ofstad, S. B., Fischbach, A., & Scherer, R. (2025). Teacher-student relationships and student outcomes: A systematic second-order meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 151(3), 365–397. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000461

Gallup. (2022, June). K-12 workers have highest burnout rate in U.S. Gallup Poll Workforce Study. https://news.gallup.com/poll/393500/workers-highest-burnout-rate.aspx

Greenberg, M. T., Brown, J. L., & Abenavoli, R. M. (2016). Teacher stress and health: Effects on teachers, students, and schools. Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University.

Ha, C., Zhang, X., Weissberg, R. P., & Durlak, J. A. (2025). Social and emotional learning and academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543241312871

Hughes, J. N., Cavell, T. A., & Wilson, V. (2001). Further support for the developmental significance of the quality of the teacher-student relationship. Journal of School Psychology, 39(4), 289–301.

Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79, 491–525.

Jennings, P. A., Doyle, S., Oh, Y., Rasheed, D., Frank, J. L., & Brown, J. L. (2019). Long-term impacts of the CARE program on teachers' self-reported social and emotional competence and well-being. Journal of School Psychology, 76, 186–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2019.07.009

Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School Leadership and Management, 28(1), 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632430701800060

Mahfouz, J., Greenberg, M. T., Weissberg, R. P., Kim, C., & Turksma, C. (2025). The prosocial school leader: Theory, research, and action. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 5, 100102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2025.100102

Murray, D. W., Mills-Brantley, R., & Hamm, J. (2025). Operationalizing mindful co-regulation to build understanding of educator social-emotional competency. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 6, 100159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2025.100159

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2015). Supportive relationships and active skill-building strengthen the foundations of resilience: Working Paper No. 13. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/working-paper/supportive-relationships-and-active-skill-building-strengthen-the-foundations-of-resilience/

Orr, S., & Lavy, S. (2024). Teaching who you are: Preliminary findings linking teachers' and students' social-emotional skills. Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, 4, 100062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2024.100062

Perry, B. D. (2006). Fear and learning: Trauma-related factors in the adult education process. In S. Johnson & K. Taylor (Eds.), New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education: The neuroscience of adult learning (Vol. 110, pp. 21–27). Wiley Periodicals. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.215

Stephens, C., Pianta, R. C., Whittaker, J. E., & Vitiello, V. E. (2026). Links between teachers' occupational burnout and students' academic, social-behavioral, and executive function performance from preschool through first grade. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 76, 468–479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2026.04.011