Whole: What Teachers Need to Help Students Thrive - Hardcover

by Rex Miller (Author), Bill Latham (Author), Kevin Baird (Author)

A shocking statistic in education reveals that 70% of K-12 teachers work under chronic stress. This revolutionary new book explains how removing stress from the classroom holds the key to improving education. The book also explains what administrators, teachers, parents, and communities can do to help accomplish a stress-free classroom.

For years, the expert voices said "disengagement" was the crucial issue behind poor educational environments and results. Naturally, only massive reform could fix it. But what if the enormous restructuring and expenditures attacked the wrong problem?

MindShift, an organization that reframes tired and clogged conversations, pushed the old conclusions off the table and started fresh. They gathered diverse leaders in education, leadership, neuroscience, architecture, and wellness in working forums around the nation. These pivotal meetings produced WHOLE, a game-changing approach to education. This book captures the story and details of how the system can be remade for real and lasting benefits to everyone.

With the authors' expertise, the book exposes the exhausted and antiquated thinking that led to the present crisis. But, WHOLE also proposes a new era of disruptive change that can produce happier, healthier, and more successful education for the 21^st century. The book introduces the outliers, tells the stories, and presents the roadmaps to:

• Why teachers should be seen as high-performance athletes, requiring time for recovery and preparation
• How schools can become "field hospitals," combining learning with healing
• Why space matters, how redesigning and refurnishing schools can eliminate stress and produce learning environments that are more open and inviting
• Ways to properly integrate schools within communities, building honest relationships, increasing social capital, and achieving transparency that increases success

Packed with real-life examples, new research, and solutions that you can introduce to your own schools, students, and communities, WHOLE shows us how to move schools from the age of stress and insecurity to an age of true educational flourishing.

Front Jacket

An astounding 70% of K-12 teachers face chronic stress at work. That shocking statistic carries major implications for the quality of education they provide to students--it's simply impossible to achieve peak performance under high stress.

For too long, experts have insisted that teacher "disengagement" leads to poor learning outcomes and environments. It's now becoming increasingly clear that removing stress from the classroom may be the long-lost key to improving education for everyone.

MindShift, an organization that identifies fresh new ways to look at critical issues, proposes reframing how we think about education. Through collaboration with leaders across a vast landscape of expertise--including education, neuroscience, leadership, and architecture--MindShift developed and tested the organic and refreshing ideas presented in WHOLE. This book not only illustrates how old educational perspectives have failed K-12 students, but it also lights the path that can improve education for everyone in a lasting way. Use it as a roadmap to discover how schools and communities can work together to bring new levels of excellence in the 21st century.

Back Jacket

PRAISE FOR WHOLE

"Many people talk about teacher burnout, but few have taken the time to really understand the problem and propose solutions. Rex and his team have. Highly recommended."
--Tony Wagner, bestselling author of The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators

"Growing up poor in Hell's Kitchen, New York, with a single mother who immigrated to the US at a young age, education was both critical and challenging. I knew it would be the most important factor in my ability to succeed in life. As the Chief Education Evangelist at Google, or any of the other organizations I am involved with, my mission is to give the millions of students who are growing up under similar conditions the opportunity to succeed. WHOLE is a bold book that successfully takes on the challenge students are facing today. It provides a roadmap for administrators and teachers to bolster teacher well-being and help students thrive."
--Jaime Casap, Chief Education Evangelist, Google

"Too often technology becomes one more thing teachers must learn, which adds more work and stress. If applied properly, technology should instead reduce the load and free a teacher to engage more with each of their students in higher-quality interactions. I recommend reading WHOLE to think through ways to reduce teacher stress and improve their health and well-being. Less stressed teachers are key to unlocking learning."
--Michael B. Horn, coauthor of Choosing College and Blended and cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute

"In order to learn optimally, children need to feel safe and cared for. Teachers want to provide environments that give students what they need to thrive, but often find themselves so overworked and highly stressed, that they're unable to be the kinds of teachers they set out to be. WHOLE looks at the current challenges and obstacles our teachers and schools are facing, how they are impacting health, mental health, and the vitality for learning, and offers practical suggestions for bringing wholeness into our schools."
--Tina Payne Bryson, PhD, LCSW, Co-author of The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, The Yes Brain, and The Power of Showing Up

"Finally a book on conscious schools! Schools have become places that demand our children to conform and perform. WHOLE does a wonderful job of exposing how this pressure is shutting down students and raising the stress on teachers. Neither can perform under these conditions. The stories and research WHOLE shares of schools that have broken out of this cycle provide hope and a path forward for your school and your classroom."
--Dr. Shefali Tsabary, acclaimed speaker, clinical psychologist and author of The Awakened Family

Author Biography

REX MILLER is the principal for MindShift, a leading futures consultancy, human performance, coaching, and organizational strategy company. Additionally, Rex is a three-time international award-winning leader and five-time Wiley author.

BILL LATHAM is the CEO of MeTEOR Education, an organization that works with communities to create holistic, High-Impact Learning Experiences that fully engage today's students and teachers. He is a leader in the movement to solve the education crisis and reform an outdated and often soulless system.

KEVIN BAIRD is chairman at the Global Center for College & Career Readiness and a co-author of the Pathway for College & Career Readiness Standards. For more than twenty years, he has served our nation's schools as an expert in the use of technology to achieve Accelerated Engaged Learning.

MICHELLE KINDER is the former Executive Director of Momentous Institute, has worked in children's mental health for over 25 years and is a nationally recognized speaker, writer and expert on social emotional health. She works with leaders invested in social change and is the Director of Social Change Leadership Programs at Stagen Leadership Academy.