About this item
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.
About the Author
Patricia (Tish) Jennings is a professor at the University of Virginia, Curry School of Education and Human Development. She is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education. She became a meditation practitioner at 17 and has taught mindful awareness practices to children and adults for over 40 years. Her research places a specific emphasis on teacher stress and how it impacts the social and emotional context of the classroom, as articulated in her highly cited theoretical article "The Prosocial Classroom."Dr. Jennings led the team that developed CARE for Teachers, a mindfulness-based professional development program shown to significantly improve teacher well-being, emotional supportiveness and sensitivity and classroom productivity in the largest randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention designed specifically to address teacher occupational stress. Dr. Jennings is leading the development of the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health education program designed to align with state and national health and physical education standards. She is Co-Principal Investigator on a large randomized controlled trial being conducted in Louisville, KY to evaluate the curriculum's efficacy. Dr. Jennings is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth. Dr. Jennings was awarded the Cathy Kerr Award for Courageous and Compassionate Science by the Mind & Life Institute in 2018 and was also recognized by Mindful Magazine as one of "Ten Mindfulness Researchers You Should Know." Earlier in her career, Dr. Jennings spent over 22 years as a teacher, school director and teacher educator. She is the author of Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom and The Trauma-Sensitive School: Building Resilience with Compassionate Teaching.
