You see them every day in middle schools: students who seem to spend more time in the office than they do in class. In Florida, middle school students are more likely than elementary or high school students to be suspended, according to the Florida Department of Education (2001). While many adolescents go through their middle school years relatively unscathed by the stress of this developmental stage, many others fail to achieve the intellectual capacities and coping skills they will need to meet the demands of adult life (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development 1989). Students who fail to develop these skills usually manifest emotional stress and express it by creating classroom disruptions that often lead to them being sent to an administrator, and the incidents documented as referrals (Bernreuter et al. 1999).