Already Ready For What Will Come - SEL For A Culture Of Care Is your school prepared to care for all of the students, staff, and families in your community? Sadly, your school might be the only point of care for many. Be already ready--Establish a compassionate cultural foundation for strong relationships and holistic skills to weather stress, trauma, and promote well-being for your entire school population. Help your school or district use available resources to create a compassionate culture of justice and care for all by leaning into this book’s approach to leadership and social emotional learning. Discover a collaborative visioning process to elevate compassion through dialogue, policies, and protocol. Readers will find: Practical strategies for working with parents and communities Activities for the whole school An implementation framework for elementary, middle, and high school Deeper understanding of trauma, ACEs, and mental health concerns Support for teachers’ mental health What not to do – practices that don’t work, and why In-depth case studies and vignettes Read this and usher in transformational and compassionate change that may be the difference in whatever today, tomorrow, or the next day may bring.

Too often educational leaders are caught in a "culture of nice," finding it difficult to give their teachers and staff critical feedback to improve their practice. This important book helps leaders become both candid and compassionate, unrelenting and supportive, and demanding yet caring. Exploring real scenarios and situations, this book helps you through the common traps of trying to improve performance, and the strategies to move beyond these pitfalls to achieve desired results. Addressing best practices for driving change such as informal feedback mechanisms, collaborative decision-making, and teacher leadership, this important book will help you create a trusting and supportive environment where you can have candid educational conversations in person and in writing, during informal chats, in PLCs, and with other leaders.

In Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging, Kathryn Riley draws on 40 years of international research and professional practice to show how schools can be places of safety and fulfilment, even in the most difficult of circumstances. When belonging is a school’s guiding principle, more young people at all levels experience a sense of connectedness and friendship, perform better academically, and come to believe in themselves; their teachers feel more professionally fulfilled, their families more accepted. The originality of this highly readable book lies in its scope. It offers international analysis from the OECD alongside insights from the author’s extensive research in schools, powerfully supported by observational vignettes and drawings from the children, young people and teachers who have been her co-researchers. The book reveals patterns of dislocation, disaffection and exclusion, and highlights the points of intervention in policy and practice needed across school systems to create the conditions for school belonging. The methodologies, concepts and research tools offered can be used by practitioners and researchers in their own contexts, and to guide school leaders towards creating their own places of belonging. This is an urgent book of hope, offering knowledge so that schools can open up possibilities to all children and young people in an increasingly uncertain world.

Where are we now? Where are we going? : preparing our students for an uncertain future / Patricia A. Jennings, Anthony A. DeMauro, and Polina P. Mischenko -- A selective review of mindfulness training programs for children and adolescents in school settings / Rebecca N. Baelen, Michael V. Esposito, and Brian M. Galla -- Turn and listen : strengthening compassion and leadership in the adult community in schools / Pamela Seigle, Chip Wood, and Lisa Sankowski -- Modeling mindfulness : principal leadership and development for personal and organizational growth / Eleanor Drago-Severson and Jessica Blum-DeStefano -- Embodied teacher mindfulness in the classroom : the calm, clear, kind framework / Cynthia Taylor, Patricia A. Jennings, Alexis Harris, Deborah L. Schussler, and Robert W. Roeser -- Cultivating passion for practicing and teaching mindfulness : a multiple-case study of compassionate school project teachers / Polina P. Mischenko and Patricia A. Jennings -- The school counselor : change agent and collaborator for holistic student well-being / Rebecca L. Tadlock-Marlo and Meghan Damler -- Creating mindful and compassionate schools : including parents as partners / J. Douglas Coatsworth, Melissa Ward George, and Aimee Kleisner Walker -- Finding peace in chaos : mindfully prepared public school teachers / Richard C. Brown and Elizabeth Grassi -- Being in school transformation : toward equity and social justice / Velma L. Cobb.

Selected as a "Favorite Book for Educators in 2018" by Greater Good. From the author of Mindfulness for Teachers, a guide to supporting trauma-exposed students. Fully half the students in U.S. schools have experienced trauma, violence, or chronic stress. In the face of this epidemic, it falls increasingly to teachers to provide the adult support these students need to function in school. But most educators have received little training to prepare them for this role. In her new book, Tish Jennings—an internationally recognized leader in the field of social and emotional learning—shares research and experiential knowledge about the practices that support students' healing, build their resilience, and foster compassion in the classroom. In Part I, Jennings describes the effects of trauma on body and mind, and how to recognize them in students' behavior. In Part II, she introduces the trauma-sensitive practices she has implemented in her work with schools. And in Part III, she connects the dots between mindfulness, compassion, and resilience. Each chapter contains easy-to-use, practical activities to hone the skills needed to create a compassionate learning environment.

Schools Cannot Do It Alone tells of Jamie Vollmer, businessman and attorney, as he travels through through the land of public education. His encounters with blueberries, bell curves, and smelly eighth graders lead him to two critical discoveries. First, we have a systems problem, not a people problem. We must change the system to get the graduates we need. Second, we cannot touch the system without touching the culture of the surrounding town; everything that goes on inside a school is tied to local attitudes, values, traditions, and beliefs. Drawing on his work in hundreds of districts, Jamie offers teachers, administrators, board members, and their allies a practical program to secure the understanding, trust, permission, and support they need to change the system and increase student succes

Build a thriving school community that creates healthy, resilient, and successful students. A companion to Mindfulness Practices, this research-backed guide outlines how to teach self-regulation by fostering the five Cs of social-emotional learning and mindfulness: consciousness, compassion, confidence, courage, and community. The authors provide a wealth of practical exercises, strategies, and tools to bring this scientifically proven approach to life across grade levels and subject areas. Use this resource to foster the well-being of every learner: Benefit from exercises that infuse social-emotional concepts and 21st century skills into academic curriculum across subjects and grade levels. Discover ideas for incorporating historical examples of consciousness, compassion, confidence, courage, and community into classwork. Learn ways to assess the five Cs elements, including the research-based S-CCATE tool, to provide evidence for what might seem unquantifiable. Become familiar with different ways educators have implemented Heart Centered LearningTM in the real world. Work with numerous activities and mindsets that foster a mixture of vulnerability and strength and ameliorate trauma. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Heart Centered Learning Chapter 2: Heart Physiology and Heart-Mind Connections Chapter 3: Consciousness Chapter 4: Compassion Chapter 5: Confidence Chapter 6: Courage Chapter 7: Community Chapter 8: Conscious Leadership Epilogue: Taking Heart, Having Heart—Looking to Our Future Appendix: S-CCATE—A Visioning and Assessment Tool to Create Heart Centered Communities References and Resources Index