WHOLE What Teachers Need to Help Students Thrive

 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.

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.

Foreword xiii

Foreword xv

Acknowledgments xvii

About the Authors xxiii

Part 1 Dying to Teach 1

Chapter 1 Dying to Teach 3

Chapter 2 Schools Are Killing More than Creativity 11

Chapter 3 Fear is the Off Switch 24

Chapter 4 The Body Remembers 34

Chapter 5 Having the Stress Conversation in Your School 50

Part 2 Changing the Story of Education 65

Chapter 6 To Change the Story 67

Chapter 7 The Early Childhood Challenge: Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later 80

Chapter 8 The Teacher Athlete 93

Chapter 9 Are Schools the New Field Hospitals? 103

Chapter 10 “Shots Fired” 116

Chapter 11 Do Healthy Buildings Improve Learning? 131

Chapter 12 The Heart-to-Head Connection: Managing Emotions to Support the Brain 142

Chapter 13 Community Before Curriculum 153

Part 3 Putting Into Practice 167

Chapter 14 Waking the Dead: The Sleep Solution 169

Chapter 15 The Magic of Movement and Mini-Breaks 182

Chapter 16 Physical Education: The Gathering Storm 194

Chapter 17 How Small Changes Make Big Impacts 209

Chapter 18 Leading Change: From Compliance to Ownership 225

Chapter 19 What Teachers Really Need to Help Students Thrive 238

Appendix A: Contributors 252

Appendix B: Sleep Hygiene Tips 263

Works Cited and Further Reading 265

Index 283

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