Compassionate Change in Schools Book
New book arriving April 2025! 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. Pre-order below now!
While many books focus on what teachers and mental health experts can do as individuals, Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities: Leading Together to Address Everyday Suffering in Schools focuses on how educators can lead together to cultivate caring and inclusive school environments. District leaders, principals, superintendents, and teacher leaders are an important part of the process as we strive to create more compassionate, dignity-affirming schools.
This book will inspire you to make compassion the focal point for your leadership practice and to find strength in leading with others in your school community, offering concrete evidence and case studies that showcase compassion's power to create flourishing school communities and rejuvenate education. To improve the wellbeing and ensure the success of the next generation, we need to better serve our K-12 students with school cultures that promote healing.
Releasing April 29, 2025 - Available Now for Pre-Order!
Receive access to guided compassion meditations
Receive special access to guided meditations along with a recorded introduction to compassion practice
- Receive special access to guided meditations
- A recorded introduction to compassion practice
- A 30-minute 1:1 compassionate leadership coaching session
- Pre-order from your preferred retailer above
- Copy and save the order number
Complete the survey with your pre-order information and you will receive an email from compassion-dignity@colorado.edu providing you access to guided compassion meditation practices.
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What They Are Saying
“What a timely gift of a book! 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, Associate Professor, Stanford University
“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
“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
“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, A Hidden Wholeness, and Healing the Heart of Democracy
Book Activities and Resources
- Engage in hands-on writing exercises and reflection questions for influencing school policies and climate
- Access practices and strategies you can implement to bring compassion to the forefront of school culture
- Establish or deepen a daily compassion meditation practice to support you in gaining insight into the everyday suffering in your school and in cultivating an attitude of compassion
- Learn from stories and examples of K-12 educators who have exemplified compassion in action
- Gain perspective on compassion in schools through a multidisciplinary lens drawing from contemplative practices, psychology, and organizational change theory
Learn More
School culture is driven by district and school leaders, but there are many others whose influence can support students' long-term thriving. Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities offers a valuable approach to integrating wellness into schools, as much for principals and superintendents as for teacher leaders, librarians, counselors, resource specialists, and others who work to create the conditions for compassion and dignity in their school.
Check Out Related Courses
- Cultivating Compassion & Dignity in Ourselves and Our Schools
- Creating Compassionate Change in School Communities -coming soon!
Compassion & Dignity for Educators
- Learn more about the Compassion & Dignity for Educators Project