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.

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

Big results come from small steps. If you think you don’t have time for mindfulness, think again. This handbook, named a Best Courageous Book of 2014 by The Center for Courage and Renewal, was written with school leaders in mind—your responsibilities, your stress, and your schedule. When you add mindfulness into your day, bit by bit, you’ll become a more effective leader and a more positive force for your staff and students. With the help of this inspirational yet practical guide, you’ll start fitting pieces of practice into your busy home and work life, whether you are sitting in your office or walking down the hall. Features include Real-life profiles of mindful school leaders Practice exercises to try right away Guidance so you know if you are "doing it right" Hard-to-find resources, including mindfulness apps Mindful school leaders are better at managing meetings, responding creatively to complex situations, and achieving resilience at work and at home. Take the first steps to transform your life—and your school. "This inspiring book makes a strong case for school leaders to include mindfulness in their personal and professional lives. Based on solid research and enhanced by compelling examples of real people, it shows how school leaders can feel more grounded, connected, clear and focused. Mindfulness makes leaders more effective with relatively little effort, but be advised that the benefits can be contagious, transforming your school from the inside out." Christopher Germer, Clinical Instructor Harvard Medical School "In The Mindful School Leader, Brown and Olson offer with remarkable clarity and depth a thorough introduction to the practice of meditation, the science behind its benefits, and many firsthand accounts of lives and work situations transformed through this practice. Although this book was written for those in leadership roles in education, it will be inspiring for anyone interested in understanding their own minds and finding more ease in life and work." Joseph Goldstein, Co-Founder Insight Meditation Society

A new educational paradigm for youth mindfulness. “If you are a teacher, or an educator, or involved in school administration and curriculum development, the book you hold in your hands has the potential to transform your life, the lives of your students, and the life of the school itself, as well as education in America.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, from the Foreword With attention spans waning and stress on the rise, many teachers are looking for new ways to help students concentrate, learn, and thrive. The Way of Mindful Education is a practical guide for cultivating attention, compassion, and well-being not only in these students, but also in teachers themselves. Packed with lesson plans, exercises, and considerations for specific age groups and students with special needs, this working manual demonstrates the real world application of mindfulness practices in K-12 classrooms. Part I, Why Mindful Education Matters, explains what mindfulness is, the science behind its benefits for students and educators, and the inspiring work that is already underway in the Mindful Education movement. In Part II, Begin with Yourself, we are reminded that in order to teach mindfully, we need to be mindful. Here teachers will learn the when, where, and how of mindfulness so they can effectively embody its practices with their students. Mindfulness practices offer teachers self-care and attention skills that prepare them to teach with greater energy and mastery. Discover how simple exercises can help manage stress, focus attention, develop compassion, and savor positive experiences in everyday life. Part III, Cultivating a Mindful Classroom, explores the qualities of a mindful teacher, the ingredients of a mindful learning environment, and helpful skills for appropriate, supportive work with cultural diversity, student stress and trauma, and varying age groups and developmental stages. Finally, in Part IV, Mindful Education Curriculum, we learn eighteen ready-to-use mindfulness lessons for use in schools. These practical exercises, designed to foster skills like embodiment, attention, heartfulness, and interconnectedness, can be readily adapted for any age group and population, and the author draws from his extensive personal experience to offer a wealth of tips for introducing them to students in real-time. Decades of research indicate the impressive benefits of mindfulness in social, emotional, and cognitive development, and as an antidote to emotional dysregulation, attention deficits, and social difficulties. This book invites teachers, administrators, and anyone else involved in education to take advantage of this vital tool and become purveyors of a mindful, compassionate, ethical, and effective way of teaching.

With this guide to mindful practice, teachers new and experienced can learn how to use mindfulness in their own professional and personal lives as well as how to incorporate it in their teaching to support student wellbeing.

A structured curriculum of classroom-ready lessons, practices, and worksheets for actualizing a powerful new educational paradigm: student mindfulness. This workbook offers a step-by-step curriculum of classroom-ready mindfulness lessons for personal and professional development. It’s a trove of fun, easy activities specially designed to help educators engage K-12 students and cultivate mindful attributes like attention, compassion, and well-being. Rich with simple and effective tips, techniques, worksheets, and guided exercises developed through extensive on-the-ground experience with real students and teachers, The Mindful Education Workbook empowers readers with all the tools they need to integrate mindful education in the school day.

Copublished with Mindful Schools A flexible set of lessons tailored to the developmental needs of adolescents, based on research in behavioral science. Arguably, no student population stands to gain more from mindfulness practice— with its power to enhance emotion regulation, attention stability, and self- awareness— than students between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In this comprehensive curriculum developed at Mindful Schools, Oren Jay Sofer and Matthew Brensilver provide twentyfive brief (twenty- to- thirty- minute) lessons that supply a framework for mindfulness instruction that can be expanded or condensed according to the needs of students. Each lesson includes a “science supplement” with research findings relevant to the practice, and handouts summarizing key aspects of the lesson that can be distributed to students. Users of the curriculum may also be interested in the instructional resource written from a similar perspective by these authors with JoAnna Hardy: Teaching Mindfulness to Empower Adolescents.