Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities

Leading Together to Address Everyday Suffering in Schools 

by Ashley Seidel Potvin, William R. Penuel, Sona Dimidjian, and Thupten Jinpa

For Educators

Compassion & Dignity for Educators

Digital Certificate

Workshops

Compassion Cultivation Training

Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities

Practice in Community

Fumble Forward

The Flourishing Academic Network

Compassion and dignity provide an essential framework for building caring and inclusive schools. Many books focus on what teachers can do as individuals; Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities is different.

This book focuses both on how educators can cultivate compassion within themselves and lead together to cultivate humanizing school environments.
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Offering concrete evidence and case studies that showcase the power of compassion to create flourishing school communities and rejuvenate education, Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities can help all educators better serve K-12 students with school cultures that promote healing.

It’s a valuable approach to integrating wellness into schools for those working to create the conditions for compassion and dignity in their schools.

Activities and resources:

Experiment and engage in meditation practices to strengthen personal capacity for mindfulness and compassion, and the application to the classroom and school communities.
Engage in hands-on writing exercises and self-reflection questions that educators can ask themselves and then apply their personal growth to influence school policies and climate.
Gain perspective on compassion in schools through a multidisciplinary lens drawing from contemplative practices, psychology, and organizational change theory.
Learn from stories and examples of K-12 educators who have exemplified compassion in action.

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“This important book builds on a simple but radical premise: ‘Our schools today need to become spaces of healing’ for students, parents and families, and educators themselves. If we acted on that premise―as the authors of this book urge and equip us to do―American education would be transformed. We would no longer focus single-mindedly on conveying information and developing cognitive skills. Instead we would attend to the development of whole persons and to the well-being of their communities. That’s an uphill task to say the least, but this well-researched book gives us the motive and means to make that journey.”

― Parker J. Palmer,
author of The Courage to Teach

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“Filled with gratitude and hands-on support for healing spaces of learning, Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities is a text that is poised to (gently) transform the lives of students and teachers.”

― Antero Garcia,
Professor, Stanford University

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“Education has changed drastically in the past five years. This book humanizes the difficulty of the changes and provides tangible steps educators can take to support their students and the people many often overlook, themselves.”

― Autumn Rivera,
2022 Colorado Teacher of the Year and 2022 National Teacher of the Year Finalist

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“This exceptionally written book reminds us to engage our work in education with our heads and our hearts. A much-needed text during these times of intensified stress, anxiety, self-doubt, and blame, these authors shepherd readers through strategies and tools to help us heal individually as we renew and reset our commitments to practices of listening, compassion, empathy, and understanding, in service with and to others. An accessibly written book, grounded in transformative and rigorous research, this book should be read by any of us determined to keep pressing and fighting for education for all.”

― H. Richard Milner IV,
Professor, Vanderbilt University, and author of The Race Card