COMPASSIONATE SCHOOL PRACTICES: FOSTERING CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Establish a compassionate cultural foundation for strong relationships and holistic skills to weather stress, trauma, and promote well-being for your school population.

Christine Mason, PhD, an educational psychologist, is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of educational reform, visioning, trauma and mindfulness, teacher and principal mentoring, and special education. She is also a yoga, mindfulness, meditation instructor who was trained in New Mexico and certified in 2001, with a Level II yoga certification in Conscious Communication in 2005. From 2005-2009, she was chair of the Education Committee for Miri Piri Academy, an international yoga boarding school in Amritsar, India. In 2009, she served for 5 months as the interim principal at Miri Piri. Since being certified to teach yoga, Christine has taught 2-5 yoga and meditation classes weekly in local community centers and for the Fairfax County Parks and Recreation program. She is a member of the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association and is also certified in Radiant Child Yoga.

Christine is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Educational Improvement, an intentional collaborative of educators and researchers actively engaging to create a transformational system of education focused on collective healing and holistic learning. We identify, curate, develop, and scale-up sustainable practices, such as Heart Centered Learning and Leadership and student-led reform, that nurture family and community connectedness, well-being, equity, and justice.

Christine is also the Chief Advisor to the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative, with Yale University’s New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center. Her time as chair of Miri Piri’s education committee and her multiple visits to India, as well as her experiences networking for transformative educational change and researching exemplary educational programs, serve as the foundation for her beliefs and efforts to bring compassionate practices to all aspects of education.

Early in her career, Christine also was a classroom teacher and a professor, teaching courses in curriculum, inclusion, social emotional learning, educational assessment, and educational research. She has also served as Associate Executive Director of Research and Professional Development at the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP); Director of Professional Development for the Student Support Center in Washington, D.C.; and the Senior Director for Research and Development with the Council for Exceptional Children. Christine is lead author of several books and articles, including Mindfulness Practices: Cultivating Heart Centered Communities Where Children Focus and Flourish, Mindful School Communities: The 5 Cs of Nurturing Heart Centered Learning, Visioning Onward: A Guide for ALL Schools, and Compassionate School Practices: Fostering Children’s Mental Health and Well-Being. She is also the primary author and developer of an innovative process for developing compassionate school cultures: The School Compassionate Culture Analytical Tool for Educators (S-CCATE).

Dana Asby, M.A., M.Ed., is the Director of Innovation and Research Support for the Center for Educational Improvement where she conducts research and writing, oversees management of the School Compassionate Culture Analytical Tool for Educators (S-CCATE) assessment, and is the copy editor of the Compassion Action newsletter. She is also Education Coordinator at the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center where she helps manage several projects including the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative. She is co-founder of Parent in the Moment, where she teaches families how to use mindfulness to reduce stress and increase the bond of love. She studied child development and neuroscience under Dr. Kimberly Noble in the Neurocognition, Early Experience, and Development lab, as well as early childhood and family policy under Drs. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Lynn Kagan at Teachers College, Columbia University and educational psychology and creativity under Dr. Bonnie Cramond at the University of Georgia. She was a preschool, early elementary, and junior high school classroom teacher in Missouri, Georgia, New York, and Japan. She is also a trauma-informed yoga teacher, trained at Shaktibarre and Exhale to Inhale.

Meghan Wenzel, M.A., is a Researcher and Writer with the Center for Educational Improvement. With a background in developmental cognitive neuroscience and education, Meghan is interested in early brain development and its implications for learning. She studied Cognitive Neuroscience at Brown University, as well as Neuroscience and Education during her Masters at Teachers College, where she worked in Professor Kimberly Noble’s lab on Neurocognition, Early Experience, and Development investigating how socioeconomic inequality impacts brain development. Meghan has worked in a policy and advocacy non-profit focused on improving the health, safety, education, and economic well-being of Rhode Island′s children and an edtech company building an adaptive learning platform to provide more personalized learning experiences. Currently, she infuses positive psychology into performance management software in order to unlock the potential of every member of the global workforce.

Katie Volk, M.A., is a child development specialist with a particular focus on early childhood and families living in poverty. She has worked with hundreds of community organizations to provide training and technical assistance in the United States and Australia, particularly focused on implementing trauma-informed practices. Katie understands the multidimensional needs of vulnerable children and families, the needs of the paraprofessionals who serve them, and the systems and contexts in which they live and work.  Katie is currently a Site Director with C4 Innovations at the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center.

Martha Staeheli, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the Program for Recovery and Community Health in the Yale School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and the Director of the School Mental Health Initiative for the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Trained as a secondary English teacher, and with a PhD in Public Health, she has extensive experience in population health and epidemiology; qualitative and mixed methods research design, analysis, and evaluation; and community and clinical intervention implementation. Her research interests are focused on recovery within substance use and mental health disorders, issues of health disparity and equity, and the health and wellness of under-resourced community, clinical and educational environments.