Compassion Action E-News, January 2020

January 16, 2020 | Volume 1, Number 1

Education, Visioning, and Destiny

Editor's Corner

Christine Y. Mason, Ph.D.

C-TLC Program Director and

Founder and Executive Director

Center for Educational Improvement

Welcome to 2020, a fifth of the way into the 21 ^st Century ! We are aiming for an auspicious year and are moving what mountains we can to empower schools so that they can advance onward to achieve their greatness.

Our nation and our schools have undergone many changes since the beginning of this century. Overall, it has been somewhat like a game of chess—with some advancements, and some losses, as educators have leapt ahead and retreated, always competing for time and attention as other pressing concerns have risen in prominence.

Wow!Ed , the Center for Educational Improvement's (CEI) monthly e-newsletter, is also celebrating its 10 ^th anniversary—10 years of finding and promoting best practices that we believe are essential for heart centered, compassionate 21 ^st Century learning.

Enjoy this edition of our new offering, Compassion Action , the e-newsletter of the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative (C-TLC) of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center.

Read more about our year in review and s tay connected to have trauma-informed, compassionate school practices and related resources delivered monthly to your inbox!

Featured Article: Destiny, Education and Next Steps to Address Mental Health Challenges

By Christine Y. Mason, Ph.D.

CEI Founder and Executive Director

The great existential and humanistic psychologist Rollo May, in the foreword to his book Freedom and Destiny (1999), writes, “Freedom is how we relate to our destiny, and destiny is significant only because we have freedom. In the struggle of our freedom against and with destiny, our creativity and our civilizations themselves are born” (p. xi.). The struggle “against and with destiny” is an interesting paradox...

News You Can Use

Visioning with Intention to Change the World by Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support

What do great schools have in common? What sets a successful school apart from a struggling one? Our decades of work in the classroom, consulting with school leaders, and looking at the research base have led us to conclude that one of the defining characteristics of an exceptional school is a sense of purpose. Driving that sense of purpose is always a group of dedicated and tireless educators. Behind those educators is a leader who understands how to inspire their team. To be transformational, that school leader must have a vision for their school that has been informed by the school community.

Establishing Mindful School Communities to Bring Healing to Education and Beyond

By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support

As neuroscience research becomes more widely disseminated and “trauma-informed” is one of the hottest buzzwords in education, leaders are asking themselves how to integrate their epiphanies about what students and teachers need to succeed into the school communities they’ve long established. As more and more educators move from thinking, “What’s wrong with Johnny?” to “What happened to Johnny and what does he need to thrive?,” principals and district leaders are wondering how to get their whole team on the same page.

Jaime Ela, a C-TLC Fellow, is a Pre-K-2nd Grade Principal at two Maine schools, Libby Tozier and Sabattus Primary Schools.

Featured Fellow: Jaime Ela, a Maine Principal Implementing Trauma-Informed Learning in the Classroom

By Kelsey Remeis, CEI Intern

Jaime, a second year principal in her Maine district, has continually worked to educate teachers about the benefits of building relationships within the school community. As a part of these efforts, she has been shifting away from some of the traditional approaches to behavior challenges and working towards more effective strategies. She is cultivating an environment that promotes learning and makes students feel safe by taking small steps, such as introducing calming corners in classrooms, that yield big rewards.

Events and Resources

CEI collaborated with SAMHSA and the New England MHTTC to create the following products in 2019:

After a School Tragedy Fact Sheet

Basecamp Training and Technical Assistance Platform (a "members only" community)

Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative Webinar Series

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Toolkit

School Compassionate Culture Analytical Tool for Educators (S-CCATE) Online Assessment

Review our Toolkit

Stay up-to-date on future events, including Jeff Donald’s webinar, "A Districtwide Approach to Coordinating Mindfulness Implementation," Tuesday, February 4

@ 4:00 p.m.

To view archived webinars, subscribe to

CEI’s YouTube channel .

Upcoming Publications

CEI is excited to announce the release of two publications in February 2020:

Visioning Onward: A Guide for All Schools (Mason, Liabenow, & Patschke, 2020)

Mindful School Communities: The Five Cs of Nurturing Heart Centered Learning (Mason, Rivers Murphy, & Jackson, 2020)

As Wow!Ed celebrates its 10 ^th Anniversary, we are also transitioning to a new newsletter name— Compassion Action. However, rest assured, we will continue to provide you with practical, cutting edge research designed for school leaders! Compassion Action will continue to support CEI’s mission to support and uplift schools through 21 ^st Century learning and leadership, as well as CEI's vision for compassionate, caring school communities.

Beginning in January 2020, our eNewsletter will be emailed bi-monthly, with related products such as issue briefs, fact sheets, and toolkits distributed in the intervening months. See our December toolkit .

You will also notice a couple of other changes beginning this month—including a new masthead — in recognition of the funding we receive from the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

Compassion Action is distributed in collaboration with the Yale University Program for Recovery and Community Health through the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Cente r . Issues will continue to be archived at the Center for Educational Improvement .

Heart Centered Reflections

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ~ Carl Jung

As you begin 2020, we encourage you to check your vision and to consider how you can help others fulfill your collective destiny. We believe achievements start with a vision. Whether your major concern is children’s mental health and well-being, reducing the stress staff face, continuing to raise academic achievement, or some combination, we will be providing guidance, including practical examples of what you can do, using strategies and techniques that are readily available in schools and districts.

We do not think it will be the shiny new car that will make the difference, but rather progressive leadership at the local level. So, principals, we urge you to consider your fate and the destiny of your school and community, as you take the first few steps into 2020 and onto the future.