Many students graduating from high school lack the social-emotional skills that help them develop into productive citizens who are college, career, military, and life-ready. Social-emotional skills include the following competencies: social awareness, self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. The current study investigated students’ self-perception of social-emotional competencies of 10th-grade high school students in central Texas who received social-emotional learning classroom instruction compared to 10th-grade high school students in North Texas who did not receive social-emotional learning classroom instruction. Data was collected and analyzed from a Student Social-Emotional Perception Survey. Results revealed significant differences in students’ overall average social-emotional competency scores between gender, ethnicity, and economically disadvantaged status. Students from the central Texas high school who received social-emotional learning classroom instruction had higher social-emotional competency scores than students from the north Texas high school who did not receive social-emotional learning classroom instruction.

Keywords: Social-emotional learning, Social-emotional competencies, Social-emotional skills, Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness, Responsible decision-making, Relationship skills