Teachers play an important role in promoting and implementing social and emotional learning and in creating positive classroom environments, which is necessary for the students’ beneficial social, emotional and academic outcomes (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). The implementation of social and emotional learning program is helpful for students, but it can also have a great impact directly on teachers. Studies showed that when teachers were involved in the social and emotional competencies training, it influenced the teaching and learning in the classroom and teachers’ promotion of a positive classroom climate (Alvarez, 2007). Improvement of teachers’ social and emotional competencies was not only related to boosting their teaching performance, but their social and emotional learning skills were also found to be positively associated with their job satisfaction (Brackett, Palomera, Mojsa-Kaja, Reyes, & Salovey, 2010). Furthermore, job satisfaction was positively associated with classroom climate (Aldridge et al., 2016). Therefore, teachers with higher social and emotional competencies are more efficient in classroom management, are more proactive, establish consistent classroom interactions, can successfully cope with the demands of the classroom, preserve a positive classroom climate, are more competent in using their emotions and also enjoy teaching (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jennings et al., 2017). Our focus will be put on the comparisons of the relationships between social and emotional competencies, job satisfaction and classroom climate of Slovenian teachers before and after the implementation of the HAND in HAND program. The sample consists of teachers from 12 elementary schools in Slovenia who teach in the classes of 8th grade students, which also participated in the HAND in HAND project. Teachers in the experimental groups took part in the HAND in HAND social, emotional and intercultural learning program and were invited to answer the questionnaire before and after the program, teachers from the control group were only asked to answer the questionnaire. Data from the following scales from the questionnaire will be used: Kentucky Mindfulness Scale (Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004), Emotional self-efficacy (Muris, 2001), adapted version of Strenghts and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman & Scott, 2012), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980), Teacher’s Relational Competence Scale (Vidmar & Kerman, 2016), adapted version of Delaware School Survey-Teacher/Staff (Bear, Yang, Harris, Mantz, Hearn, & Boyer, 2016), The BaSS Teacher Survey: Unproductive student behaviors (Sullivan, Johnson, Conway, Owens, & Taddeo, 2012), Job Satisfaction Scale, TALIS (OECD, 2014). Based on the results the implications for practice and further research will be discussed.

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