Abstract
A middle school in a large Northern California city faced the same problem many schools face, disruptive student behavior and low academic achievement. Teachers described the climate on campus as needing improvement. They explained that there were a lot of fights, foul language, no respect for teachers and students were dealing with a number of emotional issues. In order to make a change, the school took 20 minutes of instructional time out of the daily schedule and implemented a daily advisory period. They also adopted the Leader in Me program to teach students social-emotional learning (SEL) skills during the daily advisory period. The current descriptive case study investigated the perceptions of teachers and eighth-grade students with learning disabilities about the benefits of the advisory period to teach SEL skills. Data was collected through an online survey and one-on-one interviews with teachers, and one-on-one interviews with eighth grade students with learning disabilities. According to the survey data, using a Likert rating scale (1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree) the benefit from teaching SEL skills agreed on by the majority of teachers was student-teacher relationships (m=2.33), followed by student behavior (m=2.67), student engagement (m=2.67) and improvement in school climate (m=2.83). On examining the benefits of social emotional learning on the individual SEL competencies the data showed that teachers perceived the biggest increase was in the area of responsible decision making (m = 2.42), followed by relationship skills (m = 2.67), self-awareness skills (m = 2.75), social-awareness skills (m = 2.83), and self-management skills (m = 2.92). The interview data also indicated that students with learning disabilities perceived that they had learned self-awareness, self -management, and social awareness skills. In addition, the interview data from the teachers revealed positive results in academic achievement, student behavior, student-teacher relations, school climate and social-emotional learning competencies. The teachers said they would recommend that other schools implement a daily advisory period to work on SEL skills. Implications for advisory periods to teach SEL skills are discussed and further research into advisory periods for SEL are suggested.