TRANSFORMING LIVES

Fueling Schools with the Power of Relationships

FuelEd fills a gap in educator preparation and development by providing training in critical social and emotional competencies - areas of professional growth for teachers that have been historically overlooked. We equip educators with the social and emotional skills essential for building relationships in schools.

Our Mission

FuelEd develops emotionally intelligent educators who create relationship-driven schools.

What We Believe

FuelEd believes that the great promise of education is to promote human development.

Since every human being in the educated world comes into contact with an educator, leveraging educators’ capacities to build secure relationships can have a powerful ripple effect throughout the community.

With socially and emotionally intelligent educators building secure relationships at the center of every classroom and every school, FuelEd envisions a happier, healthier, more whole world.

We believe that if we equip educators with essential social and emotional knowledge and competencies, they will remain in their professions longer and develop more secure relationships with students, parents, and colleagues.

This progress toward educational transformation cannot be achieved without first acknowledging the inequities that exist in our world.

For this reason, FuelEd is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every facet of its work. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR COMMITMENT TO DEI.


Research-Backed Professional Development for Teachers

FuelEd partners with schools, districts, and organizations that serve networks of educators, to develop the interpersonal skills, self-awareness, and emotional well-being of their staff so that every educator can build secure relationships that provide the condition for optimal learning and development.

FuelEd Programs have reached educators across the country, helping to create healthy school environments where adults and students thrive.

Participants often comment that FuelEd programs are "transformative", offering unique professional development that equips educators to see and address student trauma while also training in the critical skills of empathic listening and genuine communication.

Whereas many SEL models focus on educator knowledge and behavior, FuelEd also focuses on educator self-awareness and personal transformation, both of which are critical to developing secure relationships. FuelEd provided counseling for educators from its inception through 2020 and now continues this work through advocacy efforts. LEARN MORE about how FuelEd supports counseling for educators.

Our Impact

150

More than 150 schools in the U.S. have prioritized healthy relationships by investing in the emotional development and well-being of their educators through our programs

14,000

Over 14,000 program participants in the U.S. have courageously worked toward greater self-awareness in pursuit of healthy cultures, whole adults, and whole children

132,000

Of the close to 3.3 million educators and administrators in the U.S., we plan to reach and catalyze 4% to create relationship-driven systems in their schools.

See Impact Stories

Our Evolution


FuelEd was founded by Megan Marcus in 2012 on the principle that relationships drive learning. While training as a therapist and serving as a researcher for the book The Social Neuroscience of Education by Dr. Louis Cozolino, Marcus recognized the parallels between the teaching and the counseling professions: both are founded on connection, and both could promote human development. However, a distinct difference was clear: the way therapists are trained to leverage relationships are largely missing from traditional teacher preparation.

Marcus then explored whether translating elements of therapists' professional training could fill this gap in teacher education and development, which led to the development of FuelEd’s first pilot program with 10 teachers at Houston’s YES Prep Southwest. Since then, FuelEd has worked with over 13,000 educators across the country in pursuit of its mission.

In order to create a sustainable and nourishing culture, in the winter of 2016 the FuelEd team made the move to adopt self-managed and self-governed practices. With this change came an expansion of FuelEd’s work across the country. MEET THE FUELED TEAM, BOARD, AND ADVISORS.

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