Rivers Murphy obtained a doctorate in educational leadership (K–12) from Northeastern University. Her doctoral thesis specifically addresses the gap between what students are learning in school and what they need to know to prepare for college, career, and life in the 21st century.
To learn more about Rivers Murphy’s work, follow @Rivers.Murphy on Twitter.
Yvette Jackson, EdD, is an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York and senior scholar for the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education. Jackson’s passion is assisting educators in cultivating their confidence and competence to unlock the giftedness in all students. She is driven to provide and promote pedagogy that enables students who are disenfranchised and marginalized to demonstrate their strengths and innate intellectual potential. Jackson’s approach, called Pedagogy of Confidence, helps educators believe in and value these students and optimize student success, which for Jackson, is the basis of equity consciousness.
Jackson is a former teacher and has served New York City Public Schools as director of gifted programs and executive director of instruction and professional development. She continues to work with school districts to customize and systemically deliver the collegial, strengths-based High Operational Practices of the Pedagogy of Confidence that integrate culture, language, and cognition to engage and elicit the innate potential of all students for self-actualization and contributions to our world. Jackson has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Urban Superintendents Program, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, the Feuerstein Institute, and Thinking Schools International.
In 2012, the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences International honored Jackson with its Educators’ Voice Awards for education policy/researcher of the year. She has applied her research in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory of the eminent cognitive psychologist, Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, to develop integrated processes that engage and elicit high-intellectual performances from students who are underachieving. This work is the basis for her award-winning book, The Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools. Jackson also coauthored Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership and Unlocking Student Potential: How Do I Identify and Activate Student Strengths? with Veronica McDermott.
Jackson received a bachelor of arts from Queens College, City University of New York with a double major in French and education, and a master’s degree in curriculum design, master of education, and doctor of education in educational administration all from Teachers College, Columbia University.
To book Christine Mason, Michele M. Rivers Murphy, or Yvette Jackson for professional development, contact [email protected].
Foreword
by Paul Liabenow
Whether trauma stems from violence on the streets of high-crime cities like Detroit, New York, or Washington, D.C., or abuse within a child’s own home, the impact on our students is significant. Trauma takes many forms, dramatic and subtle—the death of a grandparent, the loss of a pet, bullying at school, or the ongoing stress of living in poverty. It is pervasive. It is also more and more apparent to teachers that so many of our students exhibit signs of distress and trauma that impede learning, resulting in underachievement, loss of self-esteem, and arrested social-emotional development. Many educators are also suffering from chronic stress, pressure to raise student achievement, high expectations to turn around low-performing schools, and burnout. Trauma and toxic stress compromise students, teachers, and school leaders’ health and well-being.
Trauma takes a toll on learning, instructing, and living. Christine Mason, distinguished elementary and secondary principals, and I executed focus groups, surveys, and discussions in which educators around the United States expressed a sense of helplessness and frustration trying to find antidotes to address the tragic reality of their students’ challenges as well as their own. Teachers and school leaders recognize that traditional instruction is not adequate and that simply having high expectations and more test prep won’t meet student needs, increase achievement, raise staff morale, or improve teacher performance.
Fortunately, there is an exciting knowledge base on the neuroscience of learning, evidence from MRIs, and the authors’ empirical research illustrating how mindfulness practices and compassion can diminish stress and fortify focus, reflection, and higher-order cognitive functioning for both students and educators to mitigate the trauma of adverse childhood experiences’ deleterious impact. Research on the brain’s propensity shows that children are born with the innate potential for high levels of learning and achievement, and teachers are well positioned to help our children reclaim this potential. Human brains contain trillions of pathways, and from birth to age three neural connections continue to be generated at a rate of seven hundred connections per second (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Roberts, 2017; Schiller, 2010). Early childhood educators can help children reclaim this potential using the strategies the authors reference (Bierman & Torres, 2016). Authors Christine Mason, Michele M. Rivers Murphy, and Yvette Jackson incorporated this research to provide us with Mindfulness Practices: Cultivating Heart Centered Communities Where Students Focus and Flourish, a practical guide for teachers and school leaders to effectively address the impact of trauma on social-emotional development, learning, and achievement.
Mindfulness Practices does not present yet another program to follow. It is not an add-on or one more thing to squeeze into our busy days. Rather, the authors advocate for and illustrate change in methods of both being and doing. They provide staff with advice, practices, and exercises to incorporate directly into their teaching, as well as support for activating the benefits of mindfulness for their students—and themselves. Teachers who participated in the Center for Educational Improvement’s (CEI’s) heart centered mindfulness pilot programs in 2017 report that as the foundational practice for cultivating compassionate school environments, mindfulness was a great stress reliever for them, as classroom climates became more positive, with a new calm and sense of renewed enthusiasm and purpose. This new way of being is a new beginning toward directly combating stress, leading to greater compassion, happiness, and success for teachers, administrators, staff, and students. Whether a physical education teacher, health educator, art teacher, special education teacher, school counselor, traditional classroom teacher, or school leader, this book has practical and natural lifelong strategies for you.
As important as spreading love and goodwill is, Mindfulness Practices also does much more. It provides a systematic approach to building persistence, grit, and resilience. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author Paul Tough (2012) says:
What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. (p. xv)
As a K–12 educator for thirty-two years, a former superintendent of schools, and the executive director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, I have worked with thousands of principals and understand their needs as instructional leaders. Mindfulness Practices is a must-read. My prediction is that mindfulness and heart centeredness are not simply trending practices, but that they will be around for decades to come. These practices take pressure off students and teachers, advance well-being, and set the stage for increasing academic achievement.
With the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), the pendulum is swinging back to a more holistic, whole-child approach to education. This will be a challenge for many as we combat the barriers of bureaucracy, time, and habits. It will take some intentional effort to add creativity and kindness back into our curriculum. Mindfulness Practices will help guide you on your way, with insights, stories, research, and practical exercises. George