Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a hot topic in education these days, often finding its way onto school websites and into teacher training modules. Beyond its buzzword status, SEL has deep implications for us as teachers. After all, emotional intelligence is a fundamental aspect of early childhood education. When we integrate SEL into daily classroom life, through games, expectations, and purposeful, creative activities, children gain the tools they need to understand themselves and build healthy relationships with others.

Imagine: you’ve got everything planned and prepped for your primary English class. Your slides are ready, bursting with activities to revise earlier learning and take you and the class through today’s lesson. The video listening from the online coursebook is cued up and you’ve found a perfect, interactive online game you can all play together at the end of the lesson.

That’s when the power cut happens.

Last autumn, I sat in the staff room of a multilingual school in Valencia listening to two colleagues debate how to integrate ChatGPT into their language lessons. One argued that generative models could help learners practise conversation at home. The other worried translation tools might sap students’ motivation. Their exchange captures a broader shift: AI tools are no longer experimental curiosities; they are reshaping how we teach, learn and even think.