WHOLE

Book excerpt: 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 21st 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.