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Addressing everyday suffering in schools through compassion Compassion and dignity provide an essential framework for building caring and inclusive schools. Many books focus on what teachers can do as individuals;
Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities is different. This book focuses both on how educators can cultivate compassion within themselves and lead together to cultivate humanizing school environments. Teachers, librarians, counselors, resource specialists, mental health professionals, and social workers who are working to create conditions for compassion and dignity in schools are all leaders who can impact change. Offering concrete evidence and case studies that showcase the power of compassion to create flourishing school communities and rejuvenate education, this book will help all educators better serve K-12 students with school cultures that promote healing. Compassion can be cultivated and dignity can be affirmed, and leaders need skillful means to do so-tools and practices that can help them develop compassion for themselves and others and see their own dignity and that of others. "This important book builds on a simple but radical premise: 'Our schools today need to become spaces of healing' for students, parents and families, and educators themselves. If we acted on that premise-as the authors of this book urge and equip us to do-American education would be transformed. We would no longer focus single-mindedly on conveying information and developing cognitive skills. Instead we would attend to the development of whole persons and to the well-being of their communities. That's an uphill task to say the least, but this well-researched book gives us the motive and means to make that journey."
-PARKER J. PALMER, author of
The Courage to Teach,
A Hidden Wholeness, and
Healing the Heart of Democracy
List of contents
Introduction 1
Part 1: Cultivating Awareness and Setting Intentions 15 Chapter 1: Pausing to Attune to Our Own Experience 17
Chapter 2: Getting Close to Suffering in Our Schools 31
Chapter 3: Curiosity and Friendliness as Resources 45
Chapter 4: Setting Intentions to Act Compassionately 57
Chapter 5: Empathy and Compassion 69
Part 2: Embracing Self-Compassion and Affirming Dignity 77 Chapter 6: Self-Compassion Teaches Us to Be a Friend to Ourselves 79
Chapter 7: Making Room for Self-Compassion 93
Chapter 8: Self-Compassion as Preparation for Action Toward Justice 105
Part 3: Widening the Circle of Compassion 113 Chapter 9: Recognizing Common Humanity and Interdependence in Our Everyday Interactions 115
Chapter 10: Working with Our Difficulties and Limits 131
Part 4: Creating Compassionate Schools 147 Chapter 11: Humanizing School Environments 149
Chapter 12: Building a Shared Commitment to Compassionate Action 163
Chapter 13: Preparing for Collective Compassionate Action by Seeing the System 179
Chapter 14: Leading for Compassionate Change 191
Conclusion 205
References 211
Index 225
About the author
ASHLEY SEIDEL POTVIN, PhD, is a Research Associate in the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.
WILLIAM R. PENUEL, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
SONA DIMIDJIAN, PhD, is Director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder.
THUPTEN JINPA, PhD, is the Founder and Chairman of Compassion Institute, and the principal author of Compassion Cultivation Training
(TM).
