Mindfulness: How School Leaders Can Reduce Stress and Thrive on the Job

by Caryn Wells

Overview

Principals, superintendents, teacher leaders, and other school leaders experience considerable stress in this day of accountability and high visibility. This book address that stress level and helps school leaders learn the why, what, and how of mindfulness practice. It also helps to show how to reduce stress through mindfulness, demonstrates how mindfulness is related with effective leadership practice, and reinforces the qualities that equate with leadership legacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475826210
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/07/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Caryn M. Wells, PhD is an Associate Professor in educational and teacher leadership in the Department of Organizational Leadership at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. She teaches mindfulness for educational leaders in her graduate classes, and presents the introduction to mindfulness to doctoral and medical students at the university. Dr. Wells consults with professional organizations and presents trainings for teachers and school leaders in mindfulness, stress reduction, and mindful leadership. She is a former teacher of English, counselor, and assistant principal and principal, all at the high school level.

Table of Contents

Guide for reading this book
Survey
Preface
Introduction

PART I: The Art of Mindfulness for Leaders

Chapter one: Mindfulness for Leaders
Chapter two: Understanding Educational Leadership
Chapter three: Problems of Leadership

PART II: Practicing Mindfulness for Leaders
Chapter four: Turning Inward with Stillness
Chapter five: The Challenges of Being Fully Present
Chapter six: Mindfulness Constructs
Chapter seven- Being Instead of Doing- the Life of a Mindful Leader

PART III: Possibilities of Mindfulness for Leaders

Chapter eight- Making Time, Not Finding Time

Appendix- Sample Mindfulness Practice
Resources
References
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

This book combines transformation with education. Readers will find the capacity to cultivate their own mindfulness practice while gaining practical skills to become a compassionate, inspiring, and effective school leader. This book has an important voice in helping to cultivate an education system based on healthy hearts and minds.

Daniel Rechtschaffen

This book explores the path for learning, understanding, challenging, and thinking about oneself. Dr. Wells introduces the reader to mindfulness and then explores the pathways that lead to a balance in one’s life as an educational leader. “That way of being can contribute to an approach that has a different kind of power, the power that supports, influences, and builds capacity in others.

James Berry

Caryn Wells writes with the refreshing and authentic voice of experience — including a year in which she ran two 1,500-student high schools in Michigan. She acknowledges a sad truth about school leadership today: It is not a crisis of shortage but a crisis of lacking enough leaders who are equipped to deal with the stressors that are an inevitable part of leading. Far from succumbing to the difficulties of that challenge, Wells shares a hopeful plan of action that every school leader can and should embrace.

Joan Richardson

Finding calm in the middle of a storm most appropriately describes the purpose of this well written treatise on the practice of mindfulness “to be fully present … in the moment… to enter into stillness and calm by mindful moments or meditation…” Through self-assessment, examples and practice, this book provides guidelines to reduce stress and help leaders thrive in the workplace. Pause, take a breath and begin right away to take the time to read this book meant for all leaders, especially school leaders.

Dr. Rosemary Papa

The pressures and responsibilities placed on today’s superintendent are greater than ever before. A well-organized book, ‘Mindfulness’ provides a number of suggestions to encourage school district leaders to reflect on the day-to-day activities and challenges that come with the job in order to create positive outcomes. These concepts can also impact principals, teachers, and business and community leaders.

Daniel A. Domenech

If leadership is one of life’s greatest difficulties, being a school leader must be one of life’s greatest impossibilities. There will always be plenty of people to tell you just how wrong you are. It takes courage, patience, empathy…every possible human virtue. Caryn Wells brings years of experience in the trenches to this book, and a keen understanding of how mindfulness can be a practical tool to help a school leader get through some of those very hard days, relieve stress, and make a real difference in the lives of students, teachers, parents, and colleagues.

Barry Boyce

Mindfulness: How School Leaders Can Reduce Stress and Thrive on the Job by Caryn M. Wells is an excellent primer for mindfulness practices.... In addition to a self-assessment, the book provides practical tips and strategies for honing mindfulness skills. From seeing issues with a beginner's eye to learning from what didn't work, the opportunities to practice mindfulness are varied.

School Administrator