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The Mindful School Leader

Practices to Transform Your Leadership and School
By: Valerie Brown, Kirsten Olson

Foreword by Richard Brady

With step-by-step guidance, this inspirational handbook teaches you to use mindfulness to become a more effective leader and a positive force for staff and students.

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Product Details
  • Grade Level: PreK-12
  • ISBN: 9781483303086
  • Published By: Corwin
  • Year: 2014
  • Page Count: 256
  • Publication date: December 11, 2014

Price: $30.95

Price: $30.95
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Description

Description

Big results come from small steps.

If you think you don’t have time for mindfulness, think again. This handbook, named a Best Courageous Book of 2014 by The Center for Courage and Renewal, was written with school leaders in mind—your responsibilities, your stress, and your schedule. When you add mindfulness into your day, bit by bit, you’ll become a more effective leader and a more positive force for your staff and students.

With the help of this inspirational yet practical guide, you’ll start fitting pieces of practice into your busy home and work life, whether you are sitting in your office or walking down the hall. Features include

  • Real-life profiles of mindful school leaders
  • Practice exercises to try right away
  • Guidance so you know if you are “doing it right”
  • Hard-to-find resources, including mindfulness apps

Mindful school leaders are better at managing meetings, responding creatively to complex situations, and achieving resilience at work and at home. Take the first steps to transform your life—and your school.

"This inspiring book makes a strong case for school leaders to include mindfulness in their personal and professional lives. Based on solid research and enhanced by compelling examples of real people, it shows how school leaders can feel more grounded, connected, clear and focused. Mindfulness makes leaders more effective with relatively little effort, but be advised that the benefits can be contagious, transforming your school from the inside out."
Christopher Germer, Clinical Instructor
Harvard Medical School

"In The Mindful School Leader, Brown and Olson offer with remarkable clarity and depth a thorough introduction to the practice of meditation, the science behind its benefits, and many firsthand accounts of lives and work situations transformed through this practice. Although this book was written for those in leadership roles in education, it will be inspiring for anyone interested in understanding their own minds and finding more ease in life and work."
Joseph Goldstein, Co-Founder
Insight Meditation Society

Read Valerie's Edweek article: "8 Steps to Be a Mindful Listener"


Key features

The book uses the following:

  • "Portraits of Practice," case studies and interviews with educational leaders currently in the field that demonstrate how individuals in the U.S. and around the globe are using mindfulness to improve their lives and their schools, embedded in the text alongside key practices described;
  • a mindful school leader small step guide to building a mindfulness practice;
  • helpful tips for incorporating mindfulness in daily life in all leadership venues: meetings and meeting preparation, team leadership, strategic planning, walking-around-management;
  • mindfulness resources (books, places to practice mindfulness, DVDs, etc) for school leaders;
  • links to guided mindfulness meditation audio and YouTube video to assist school leaders develop and sustain a mindfulness practice;
  • a sampling of mindfulness apps to remind school leaders to be mindful.
Author(s)

Author(s)

Valerie Brown photo

Valerie Brown

Valerie Brown, JD, MA, PCC, transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year career as a lawyer lobbyist, representing educational institutions and nonprofits, to human-scale work with leaders and teams to foster trustworthy, compassionate, and authentic connections. She is an accredited leadership coach, international retreat leader, writer, and Chief Mindfulness Officer of Lead Smart Coaching, LLC (www.leadsmartcoaching.com), specializing in application and integration of mindfulness and leadership, and is a Co-Director of Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.

She holds the following degrees: Juris Doctorate, Master of Arts, and Bachelor of Arts.

Her books include The Road that Teaches: Lessons in Transformation through Travel (QuakerBridge Media, 2012) and the highly acclaimed, The Mindful School Leader: Practices to Transform Your Leadership and School (Corwin, 2014).

Valerie’s received extensive training from the Center for Courage & Renewal and Parker J. Palmer; the Institute for Transformational Leadership at Georgetown University; the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, & Society; the Center for Compassion Focused Therapy; the Ojai Foundation; the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology (NYC); Chestnut Hill College (PA) Certificate in Holistic Spirituality; The Leadership Circle Profile™; and Transformational Educational Leadership. Valerie is an ordained Dharma Teacher in the Plum Village tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh and a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). As a certified kundalini yoga teacher, she helps leaders discover the wisdom of the body. She leads an annual transformational pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain, to celebrate the power of sacred places.

Kirsten Olson photo

Kirsten Olson

Kirsten Olson is Chief Listening Officer at Old Sow Coaching and Consulting, where she works with education and learning-sector leaders nationally and internationally. She received a masters and doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is also the author Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up To Old School Culture (Teachers College Press, 2009) and Schools as Colonizers (Verlag, 2008). Kirsten is a founding board member of the Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA), a national not-for-profit organized to create greater educational equity, social justice, and to foster passionate learning.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword by Richard Brady, President, Mindfulness in Education Network


Introduction


Chapter 1. Why Mindfulness? The School Leader's Life

A School Leader Practicing Mindfulness

Benefits of Practice

What Is Mindfulness?

Why Do Leaders Need a Mindfulness Practice?

Leadership Challenges to Our Sector

Knowing When to Disengage and Recharge

How Stress Shapes Our Brains

Mindfulness for Educational Leaders

Your Leadership Practice Matters

A Leader With a Growing Mindfulness Practice

First Steps: You've Got to Practice

Portraits of Practice

Chapter 2. The Science of Mindfulness

Practice Snapshot: A School Leader Practicing Mindfulness

The Science of Mindfulness

Stress: A Public Health Risk for Educators

Mindfulness Alleviates Stress in the Body and Mind

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Portraits of Practice

Chapter 3. The Well-Focused School Leader

A Sleepless Night for Jason

Mindfulness and Attention Training

Two Ways to Practice: Formal and Informal

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Mindful Attitudes

How Much Practice Time?

Practices That Complement Mindfulness

Distraction: The New Normal and the School Leader’s Dilemma

Negativity Bias: Part of the School Leader’s Dilemma

The Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind

The Myth of Multitasking

Portraits of Practice

Chapter 4. Communication and Connection: Powerful Skills of the Mindful School Leader

Donna S.T.O.P.s

Mindful Communication: Mindful Speaking, Mindful Listening

Having Difficult Conversations

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Portraits of Practice

Chapter 5. Reclaiming Our Wholeness: Four Educational Leaders Explore Mindfulness

Portraits of Practice: Schools Leaders Practicing Mindfulness

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Chapter 6. Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence: Principles and Practices to Transform Your Leadership Life

A Leader Fails to Notice

A Leader Grows EQ Through Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Portraits of Practice

Chapter 7. Mindful Leadership in Action: Putting It All Together

Fundamental Principles: The Evolution of the Leader Evolves the Team

Stepping-Stones in Your Leadership Journey: Know Yourself

What Mindfulness Practice Supports

A Mindful Leader in Action: A Last Case Study

Well-Being and Compassion at the Center of a New Educational Vision

Mindfulness Practice Aids

Portraits of Practice

Appendix A: Books for the Mindful School Leader (Online Only)


Appendix B: The (General) Mindful Library (Online Only)


Appendix C: Mindfulness Apps—Our Top Picks (Online Only)


Appendix D: Our Top Picks for Websites and Places to Practice Mindfulness (Online Only)


Appendix E: Relevant, Recent Mindfulness Research in Education (Online Only)


Appendix F: Comprehensive List of All Mindfulness Practice Aids in This Book (Online Only)


Appendix G: Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (Online Only)


Reviews

Reviews

Price: $30.95
Volume Discounts applied in Shopping Cart

Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.

Related Resources

  • Access to companion resources is available with the purchase of this book.