The modern school with its nurturing function has to deal with numerous factors that negatively affect interpersonal relations between young people. Therefore that appears to be of great importance and timely to reinforce the Education Standards (ES) of the Russian Federation with a provision that declares the need to teach schoolchildren “to accept themselves and others without judgement”. However, while analysing the publishing statistics of the Russian Internet library elibrary.ru, the author reveals that realisation of this provision is far from being sufficiently supported with research and methodological literature. On the other hand, foreign countries (with the example of the USA) have long been thoroughly researching and designing practical programmes for social and emotional learning (SEL). This work is largely close to the process of fostering the ability to accept oneself and others without judgement, since such programmes include the development of empathy, understanding and managing emotions, as well as teaching conflict resolution. The article highlights the great potential of the SEL programmes and suitability of applying them in the Russian system of education. Besides, based on the behaviouristic approach, the author proposes original techniques of emotional drill centred around anchor images, which could be used for putting into practice the analysed provision of the Russian ES. The article is exploratory and disputable with the results able to be used in further research of ways to increase the nurturing potential of schools, ways to foster emotional intelligence and empathy, to develop spiritual and morale traits of schoolchildren and the culture of conflict-free interaction.