Many people today are unhappy and isolated resulting in alarming rates of depression, mental illness, suicide, and violence. Despite the substantial research documenting the benefits of social emotional learning (SEL), there are problems with the current implementation of SEL programs in schools. A lack of authenticity is one major problem, as many SEL programs do not reflect the individual school or classroom culture to teach SEL in context-specific ways that resonate with students. Furthermore, there is a lack of qualitative studies that actually describe what effective SEL looks like in practice, especially in school settings with a racially and economically diverse student population. The specific aims of this study are to understand: (1) how effective SEL programs are delivered and integrated into classroom lessons and the conditions in which these practices are occurring; (2) the impact of SEL on students by exploring their perspectives; (3) how teachers adapt formal SEL programming to be more personally meaningful to students and fit their classroom culture, while maintaining program fidelity and school-wide coherence; and (4) the extent to which effective SEL programming reflects the C5 for Action Framework.