Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress (Coursera)

Offered by Yale University,
Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress (Coursera)

Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress will provide participants with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to understand and manage their emotions and those of their students. The 10-hour online course is designed for school staff, including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, principals, and non-teaching staff in preK-12 schools.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

What You Will Learn

  • Educate school staff in the science and impact of stress
  • Provide school staff with the opportunity to build and apply social and emotional skills and strategies
  • Offer strategies for helping students to identify and manage their emotions
  • Provide resources and ideas that are relevant during this time of heightened stress and uncertainty

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Introduction to SEL and Why Emotions Matter
Social and emotional skills are more important now than ever. As educators, we can find ways to better identify and manage our own emotions, which in turn, can help our students identify and manage theirs. In this introductory week, we’ll unpack how emotions can help and hinder attention, decision making, relationships, health, and performance.

WEEK 2
Identifying Our Emotions
In this section, you'll focus on how to identify your own emotions, which is an essential first step to building emotional intelligence skills. You'll explore how to recognize, understand, and accurately label emotions using the Mood Meter. This section builds a foundation for the rest of the course, where you'll learn how to manage your emotions and help students to manage theirs.

WEEK 3
Managing Our Own Emotions with Action Strategies
In this section, you'll apply what you've learned about identifying your emotions to the practice of managing your emotions. You'll explore and reflect on a series of "action strategies" to help you manage your emotions in healthy, productive ways.

WEEK 4
Managing Emotions by Shifting How We Think
While the previous section focused on "action strategies" to support healthy emotion management, this section focuses on "thought strategies." You'll consider research-based ways to shift the way you think to shift the way you feel, and consider how you can incorporate these strategies into your daily life.

WEEK 5
Becoming a Culturally Responsive Emotion Scientist
This section focuses on applying strategies for approaching your own and others' emotions in scientific and culturally responsive ways. You'll have the opportunity to describe the biases involved in identifying and managing emotions, as well as to reflect on the potential impact of your own biases on your interactions with others.

WEEK 6
Identifying Others' Emotions
While the first half of the course focused on identifying your own emotions, this section focuses on strategies for improving your awareness of others' emotions (especially the emotions of your students). You'll explore the barriers to understanding others' emotions and ways to improve this skill as an emotion scientist.

WEEK 7
Helping Others Manage Emotions
This section takes your skills in identifying others' emotions a step further, providing research-based steps to help others manage their emotions. You will be introduced to the concept of emotion co-regulation, as well as a five-step process to support students in moments of high stress.

WEEK 8
Making a Commitment to Lasting Change
This final section brings together everything so far in the course. You'll look at your action plans from each section of the course and make a commitment to lasting change.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Tools and Techniques for Managing Stress (Coursera) Coursera
Starweaver

Tools and Techniques for Managing Stress (Coursera)

Welcome to the "Tools and Techniques for Managing Stress" course! This course offers valuable tools and techniques to effectively manage and cope with stress in both personal and professional domains. Through this program, students will acquire strategies to identify stressors, develop comprehensive stress management plans, and implement relaxation techniques that foster overall well-being.

Nov 9th 2026
1 Week
Uncertainty and Research (Coursera) Coursera
Johns Hopkins University

Uncertainty and Research (Coursera)

This course teaches the fundamentals of scientific research. We approach the research process as a means of systematically reducing uncertainty and demonstrate how conducting a scientific investigation can be posed as an exercise in Bayesian uncertainty quantification. We begin by exploring the scientific landscape to understand the different types of research, where they are conducted, how they are supported, and why each of these types of research is important.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Self Awareness and the Effective Leader (Coursera) Coursera
Rice University

Self Awareness and the Effective Leader (Coursera)

Part of being an effective leader is learning how to play to your strengths and overcome characteristics that don't lend to good leadership practices. During the course, you will examine your own strengths and learn ways to use them in a leadership role. Learn to manage stress and solve problems creatively. Throughout the course, you will also build a tool kit of useful techniques that you can begin using right away in your engineering career.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Synapses, Neurons and Brains (Coursera) Coursera
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Synapses, Neurons and Brains (Coursera)

These are very unique times for brain research. The aperitif for the course will thus highlight the present “brain-excitements” worldwide. You will then become intimately acquainted with the operational principles of neuronal “life-ware” (synapses, neurons and the networks that they form) and consequently, on how neurons behave as computational microchips and how they plastically and constantly change - a process that underlies learning and memory.

Nov 16th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Stress First Aid for Healthcare Workers: A Peer Support Tool (Coursera) Coursera
Duke University

Stress First Aid for Healthcare Workers: A Peer Support Tool (Coursera)

Stress First Aid (SFA) is a peer support toolkit designed to preserve life, prevent further harm, and promote recovery. Stress First Aid offers a flexible menu of options for recognizing and addressing stress reactions. It can be used for self-care, to help co-workers with stress reactions, or to help someone seek other types of support. Stress First Aid is a framework of practical actions that can help reduce the likelihood that stress reactions will develop into more severe or long-term problems.

Nov 9th 2026
4 Weeks
The Softer Side of Science Communication (Coursera) Coursera
University of Colorado Boulder

The Softer Side of Science Communication (Coursera)

In this course, you will continue to explore how to develop and implement evidence-based methods for science communication. Here we’ll be looking at the softer but no less important side of science communication. We’ll cover the basics of human emotion, building connection with your audience through empathy and authenticity, how improv can improve your science communication game, non-verbal communication, and managing adversity in science communication. We’ll close with a discussion of how to be an inclusive and trauma-informed science communicator.

Nov 9th 2026
4 Weeks
Introduction to Psychology (Coursera) Coursera
Yale University

Introduction to Psychology (Coursera)

What are people most afraid of? What do our dreams mean? Are we natural-born racists? What makes us happy? What are the causes and cures of mental illness? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, persuasion, emotions, and social behavior. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury.

Nov 23rd 2026
5-12 Weeks
Life 101: Mental and Physical Self-Care (Coursera) Coursera
University of California, Irvine

Life 101: Mental and Physical Self-Care (Coursera)

This course will cover various topics that would teach students healthy lifestyle choices, the importance of mental and physical health and self-care. For each topic, an evidence-based lecture that would include scientific evidence will be presented and then students will be provided practical methods to practice what they have learned from the lectures. One of the main goals of this course is to inspire students to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

Nov 9th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Engineering of Structures: Shear and Bending (Coursera) Coursera
Dartmouth College

Engineering of Structures: Shear and Bending (Coursera)

This course deals with shear and bending. Shear is a set of parallel, non-collinear forces acting across an element and bending is the curved form taken by a slender element when subjected to loads perpendicular to the element. These forces are easy to understand. You will study how stress and bending force acts for different structures and also, identify what role these forces play in their designs.

Nov 9th 2026
3 Weeks
Managing Uncertainty in Marketing Analytics (Coursera) Coursera
Emory University

Managing Uncertainty in Marketing Analytics (Coursera)

Marketers must make the best decisions based on the information presented to them. Rarely will they have all the information necessary to predict what consumers will do with complete certainty. By incorporating uncertainty into the decisions that they make, they can anticipate a wide range of possible outcomes and recognize the extent of uncertainty on the decisions that they make. In Incorporating Uncertainty into Marketing Decisions, learners will become familiar with different methods to recognize sources of uncertainty that may affect the marketing decisions they ultimately make.

Nov 2nd 2026
4 Weeks
Less Stress, Better Health (Coursera) Coursera
American Psychological Association

Less Stress, Better Health (Coursera)

Stress is a natural part of the human experience. However, stress can also be damaging to people’s physical and psychological health. This course provides an introduction to stress in general and then explores the psychological, physiological, and social consequences of stress. It ends with information on how you can combat the negative effects of stress and build resilience so you can not just survive stress, but also use it to help you grow.

Nov 9th 2026
5-12 Weeks