You See It Every Day. Children Struggling with More Than Academics.
The child who cannot focus. The one who melts down during transitions. The quiet one who is holding everything inside. You know these children, and you know that academic instruction alone is not enough to reach them. HeroMe is a tool that supports your SEL work through the power of personalized storytelling.
Why Stories Matter for Social-Emotional Learning
You already know that social-emotional learning is not a separate curriculum bolt-on—it is the foundation that makes academic learning possible. A child who cannot regulate their emotions cannot focus on fractions. A child who cannot navigate peer relationships will struggle with group projects regardless of their intellect.
Stories are one of the most natural and effective vehicles for SEL. When children engage with a narrative, they practice perspective-taking, empathy, emotional identification, and decision-making without the self-consciousness of a structured lesson. The emotional distance of fiction creates safety. The engagement of story creates motivation. And the mirror of a relatable character creates the personal connection that makes learning stick.
Research consistently supports this. Bibliotherapy—the practice of using stories to support emotional growth—has decades of evidence behind it, particularly in educational settings where it has been used to support children dealing with anxiety, peer conflict, transitions, and behavioral challenges.
Aligned with the CASEL Framework
HeroMe stories address all five CASEL core competencies through narrative. Here is how each competency shows up in the stories:
Self-Awareness
Stories help children recognize and name their emotions. The character models emotional identification: noticing physical sensations, labeling feelings, and understanding triggers.
Self-Management
Characters learn and practice coping strategies within the narrative: deep breathing, cognitive reframing, taking breaks, and asking for help. Children absorb these strategies through observation.
Social Awareness
Stories include diverse characters with different perspectives and feelings. The hero learns to consider how their actions affect others and to recognize emotions in the people around them.
Relationship Skills
Characters navigate friendships, family dynamics, and peer interactions. Stories model communication, cooperation, conflict resolution, and asking for support.
Responsible Decision-Making
The hero faces choices throughout the arc. Stories model thinking through consequences, considering the wellbeing of self and others, and making thoughtful decisions under pressure.
How Educators Use HeroMe
HeroMe is primarily a home-based tool—families create and read stories together. It is designed to support, not replace, professional educational and therapeutic interventions. But there are several ways it connects to your work in the classroom and school.
Recommendation to Families
When you notice a child struggling with emotional regulation, anxiety, peer relationships, or behavioral challenges, you can recommend HeroMe to their family as a home-based support tool. The first story is free, so there is no cost barrier for families to try it.
This is especially valuable for families who may not have access to therapy—HeroMe can provide structured emotional support through storytelling while the family explores other resources.
School Counselor Bridge
School counselors can recommend HeroMe as a between-session tool, similar to how a therapist would use it. When a child is working on a specific challenge with the school counselor, a HeroMe story addressing that same challenge provides nightly reinforcement at home.
The story gives counselors and children a shared reference point for conversations: “Remember how the character handled that situation? What do you think you could try?”
Family Engagement
Parent-teacher conferences are an opportunity to recommend tools that extend SEL work into the home. HeroMe gives families a structured, low-friction way to practice emotional skills together. The shared bedtime reading ritual creates a natural context for the kind of parent-child emotional conversation that supports school-based SEL work.
The Research Connection
Bibliotherapy in educational settings has a strong evidence base. A 2024 systematic review published in BMC Systematic Reviews found that creative bibliotherapy in schools showed positive effects on children's emotional wellbeing and resilience across multiple studies and age groups.
Research in the Journal of Poetry Therapy has demonstrated that research-informed storytelling helps children process difficult experiences from a safe emotional distance—a finding that is particularly relevant in educational settings where children may not feel safe expressing vulnerability directly.
HeroMe extends the traditional bibliotherapy model by personalizing the stories to each child, which research suggests strengthens the identification stage that drives emotional engagement. When the character in the story shares the child's name, their stuffed animal, and their specific challenge, the emotional connection is immediate.
Getting Started
HeroMe is a family tool—parents create stories for their children and read them together. Your role as an educator is to connect families with the resource. Here is how:
Identify the Need
When you notice a child who could benefit from additional emotional support—anxiety, anger, social challenges, difficulty with transitions —consider recommending HeroMe to their family.
Share with the Family
Direct families to herome.ai. The first story is free. Frame it as a bedtime reading tool that supports the emotional skills you are working on in the classroom.
Follow Up
Check in with the family about how the stories are going. If the child is responding well, the story becomes a shared reference point for classroom SEL conversations and counselor sessions.
A Resource Worth Recommending
Try HeroMe yourself to see what families will experience. Create a free story in five minutes.