CLEVELAND, Ohio - Jennifer Pelko sees more and more students in the Strongsville schools struggling with stress.

They struggle when relatives are sick or die. They struggle with bullying, both at school and online. Students and the adults around them struggle with drugs and alcohol.

"We focus so much on the academic side of things," said Pelko, that district's assistant superintendent. "But a lot of our students have a lot of emotional issues and are ill-equipped to deal with them."

So Strongsville joined a growing number of districts across the country last year that are making "Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)" a priority in their classrooms. Along with teaching the traditional academic skills, schools are guiding students more and more on things like teamwork, empathy, conflict resolution and managing their emotions.

Lots of Social and Emotional Learning sounds like things that health classes or counselors used to handle, like anti-bullying and anti-drug lessons or just basics on how to behave. It also includes concepts you'll hear teachers and administrators talk about like "soft skills" and "teaching the whole child.

But it's still a developing field for educators, who have yet to agree on a clear definition of just what "Social and Emotional Learning" is.

A partnership of 10 large districts around the country, including Cleveland, known as the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), has perhaps the most complete definition:

"The knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions."

If schools can help students learn these skills, educators believe, student behavior in classrooms improves, students are more able to learn the traditional and tested subjects and should lead happier and more productive lives.

"This is in some ways new, but in some ways it's just the same old basics we always believed in," said Tim Shriver, head of a national panel studying social and emotional teaching in schools for the Aspen Institute. He is most recognized as chairman of the Special Olympics. "Schools are now doing old basics in new and creative ways."

State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria said that schools have tackled issues on a piecemeal basis before, but are now looking at how the different parts relate.

"People have always been doing it," DeMaria said. "We just haven't been as deliberate about it."

The state is leading a few of those efforts:

- All schools in Ohio are required under a 2013 state policy to have a plan for Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS). These plans, though they vary widely, are meant to focus less on punishment than on helping students resolve their issues.

- State officials have made reducing suspensions and having students reflect on why they behaved poorly a focus in recent years.

"If you think of this just in terms of punishment, you're missing the boat," said State Sen. Peggy Lehner, who heads the Senate Education Committee. "It shouldn't be about controlling your classroom. It should be about how to get a kid in an emotional place to learn."

- The state has also set standards for social and emotional skills that students in the early grades must be taught, like self-control, delayed gratification, understanding that actions have consequences and taking responsibility for them. It is working with CASEL, DeMaria said, to set expectations for all grades.

Districts, on their own, have taken varying approaches. Some have just a few clubs or classes that deal with bullying and drug and alcohol use. Some direct extra counseling to students they identify as having real struggles, while others add more proactive lessons for all students.

The Independence schools put its own lessons together for periodic social and emotional lessons for young students.

"We just see a need," said Superintendent Ben Hegedish. Though parents typically teach these lessons to their children, he said, many are working two jobs or don't now how to handle added pressures from violent television shows and movies or the bullying and social stresses of social media.

"Should it be done at home? Yes," Hegedish said. "Should it be done in schools. The answer is also yes."

Strongsville has gone further than most, adopting a curriculum known as "Second Step" that covers issues like empathy and communication, de-escalating tense situations, setting goals, keeping commitments, and managing emotions. Young students have periodic classes with counselors, while 5th and sixth graders have quarter-long courses.

Pelko said she wants to be sure students know how to handle issues without harming themselves or others.

"The worst thing is to lose a child because they didn't know what to do or they didn't know who to talk to," she said. "I couldn't live with myself if we just did nothing."

A shooting at the SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland 10 years ago prompted Cleveland to be one of the first districts nationally to make social and emotional issues a regular part of school. Shriver's committee with the Aspen Institute visited Cleveland this spring to study efforts here as it plans recommendations for schools nationwide, due next year.

Cleveland starts lessons called PATHS - Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies - with kindergarten students and adds Second Step for later grades, with teachers giving SEL lessons at least three times a week.

High school efforts are more scattered and focused on particular issues, like drug use, and not overall lessons like in early grades. That's true in most districts, not just Cleveland.

Whether these plans work is still an open question, though studies are showing some long-term benefits. CASEL just reported that a combination of small studies shows that student test scores rise about 13 percentile points if they receive SEL training.

And others are looking at SEL lessons in the same way researchers look at preschool - as a way to set the stage for fewer dropouts, pregnancies, crimes and welfare needs down the line - to save the public money. Columbia University researchers estimated in 2015 that the public saves $11 for each $1 spent on SEL efforts.