Social and emotional learning (SEL) has become an avant-garde term in the last few years. It is how people acquire and apply knowledge, attitudes and skills to understand and control emotions. Incorporating the SEL perspective, teachers can not only help students set and achieve positive goals, but also help students understand how empathizing with others will allow them to establish and maintain positive relationships as well as aid them in making responsible decisions. SEL also touches a number of fields with which it is related: emotional intelligence, mindfulness and the recently developed concept of Mediation which was detailed in the Companion Volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In this paper, two researchers from different countries (the USA and Spain) review the literature on SEL, give a bird's eye view of the SEL situation in their countries, discuss its value in the classroom and make recommendations for further study.