Case Study 12B

Implementing the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) Program1

Judith Nuss

1 The research reported here on the CARE program was supported by the Institute of Education Science, U.S. Department of Education, through grant #R305A090179 to Pennsylvania State University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

For more than five years, I led the implementation of social and emotional learning in the school district of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This was innovative, districtwide work. My experience as a teacher, school administrator, research assistant, community psychologist, and advocate for the improvement of teaching and learning, particularly in the urban setting, provided me with the knowledge and skills necessary for this challenging work. I am grateful to the people of Harrisburg and their educators for providing the motivation, support, and rewards necessary to overcome the inevitable barriers associated with the project described here.

CARE in a Small Urban Capital City School District

At the turn of the century and for two decades previously, Harrisburg School District was the worst of five hundred school districts in Pennsylvania by pre–No Child Left Behind (NCLB) measures. It was the only thing everyone in the area agreed about—how bad the schools were. You knew it by the revolving door of district superintendents who tried to do what they could and failed. You knew it when you could walk in any door of a school, but only after walking through groups of kids hanging around the doorways. You knew it when kids were everywhere in the hallways—all the time—running, shouting, fighting, cursing. You knew it by classroom doors, bolted or chain locked on the inside, and with broken windows that were boarded over or barred. You knew it by the void of books and informative bulletin boards and by the presence of graffiti everywhere. You knew it by the garbage on the floors and by classrooms that looked like someone’s old basement. You knew it by the few who would dare to enter a school bathroom. You also knew it by the faces of the adults in the building; the faces wore signs of depression, fear, anxiety, and lack of self-efficacy.

By 2010, some of these same faces had come and gone. Some of the others have changed into pleasant, self-confident faces eager to welcome enthusiastic students into safe, clean, and caring classrooms. A dynamic duo of experienced district-level superintendents, Dr. Gerald Kohn and Dr. Julie Botel, had come to town as change agents and started working the challenging and exhausting processes of positive change. School buildings were rehabilitated, expanded, and modernized. Teachers were provided high-quality professional development to implement balanced literacy, math, and science curricula. Teacher coaches were developed and provided support to teachers as they learned new habits of best practices. Teachers, unwilling or unable to improve their practices, were exited. Supports for learning were provided, including student referral systems, positive support interventions, school-based mental health services, and certified school counselors who counseled. Family nights became a norm most months in many of the schools, and the percentage of parents who attended parent–teacher conferences increased. Community partnerships were nurtured and optimized, including those with universities.

Currently in this setting, more than 93 percent of nine thousand students are living in poverty, approximately 71 percent are African American, 21 percent are Latino/Hispanic, and all are at high risk for school and personal failure. Now in 2011, under different district leadership, two hundred teachers were furloughed in June due to budget constraints.

As part of the Kohn/Botel change process in 2005, a district-level department for social and emotional learning was developed, and experienced leadership was assigned to it. I was given the innovative role of director of social and emotional learning and the task of infusing social and emotional learning in all aspects of the curriculum for all students, preschool through grade 12. Evidence-based prevention programs were implemented in every school after teachers participated in exceptional adult learning. Social and emotional learning was a new concept for most, and many confused it with special education services. Well-known programs such as PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies), Responsive Classroom, Developmental Designs, Facing History and Ourselves, LifeSkills, Making Proud Choices, and advisory programs have been successfully implemented over five years.

Teachers were teaching social and emotional competencies, developing healthier teacher–student relationships and healthier classroom environments, and generating better student outcomes. Yet, in all of this positive change, the gains were not ideal, and something important was missing. Teacher well-being had always been a concern, but never a focus.

Teachers are stressed by the external assessment forces of NCLB and its by-product, adequate yearly progress (AYP); budgetary cuts in the teacher ranks and programming; and mayoral or corporate takeovers of public schools. Teachers, in a struggling urban setting where districtwide positive change is evolving, are especially stressed while engulfed in the whirlwinds of dramatic changes in processes, procedures, expectations, assessments, data systems, and demands for outcomes. Indeed, in the 2008 teacher/staff survey administered by Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg, only 32 percent of the 424 respondents said that “only about half of the staff support each other in ways that help to reduce professional stress.” Seventy-four percent of respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed that “it is okay to discuss feelings, worries, and frustrations with colleagues”; whereas 57 percent of respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed that “it is okay to discuss feelings, worries, and frustrations with district administrators.” Support was being provided for students’ learning and well-being, but greater support needed to be available for the adults in the schools.

Learning is difficult for young students. Adult learning in a high-stress environment can be even more challenging. Adult learning requires the learner to be motivated to orient to new learning, to believe the new learning will be helpful and appropriate, and to be self-efficacious enough to “master” the new learning.

Through a partnership with Pennsylvania State University, represented by Dr. Patricia Jennings from the Prevention Research Center, College of Health and Human Development, the district decided to open the door to a new concept of adult learning for teachers. Mindfulness in education had been a growing interest for the department of social and emotional learning, especially while searching for the best supports for teachers. However, the stigma of “mindfulness” needed to be overcome with informative dialogue with district decision makers. A gut reaction to the term mindfulness often elicits nonsecular visualizations of worship, prayer, and meditation. Instead, mindfulness can be portrayed as a reflective and preventive strategy for replacing reactive coping mechanisms with responsive strategies of support for student and classroom success and as a resilience-strengthening strategy for teachers to garner their internal strengths. More simply, mindfulness helps teachers reduce or suspend judgment, raise awareness and intentionally pay attention to what is truly important in the present moment, and act with compassion instead of frustration and anger. Impulsive thoughts and reactions are reduced in mindful teachers, and classroom relationships are strengthened and valued.

The Social and Emotional Learning Department promoted mindfulness as a school improvement strategy and circulated articles about how work in mindfulness carried out by educators helps teachers manage their own professional and personal stress and helps them be more proactive in their practices and interactions. Opportunities were garnered to enable several top district administrators to participate in the Mind and Life Institute in Washington, D.C., where His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and several internationally recognized psychologists discussed mindfulness and its benefits to education. Many university professors were present and shared that they have begun to introduce mindfulness in some of their education courses for prospective teachers.

District leadership agreed with the need to provide teachers with proven strategies for managing their many stressors so that they could be calm, caring, and emotionally aware and competent in the classroom. The mindfulness in education effort in the district was given the green light, with workshops being offered outside of the school day for volunteer teachers.

District-level discussions with Dr. Jennings led to a selection of particular schools that would be most likely to be receptive to an offer for voluntary participation in four days of mindfulness in education experiences in a program called Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE). Each of the schools’ principals met with Dr. Jennings and the district-level social and emotional learning team to discuss the potential of this kind of adult learning for their teachers and how best to provide it. In each case, principals nearly begged for help in reducing the stress their teachers felt; however, they were realistic about the pressures of time for teachers. The first mindfulness workshop would be offered for two weekends, the second weekend following the first by one month. Two schools would pilot the work. The CARE team of central office leadership and Dr. Jennings and her staff met with each faculty to introduce mindfulness in education and to present the opportunity to participate in the four-day workshops. Teachers’ stressors of having to manage student behaviors, the emotions of teaching and learning, the urgency of the need to increase student achievement and performance, and their own well-being were affirmed. That each of these stressors is likely to be greater in a high-poverty setting was also acknowledged. Finally, it was affirmed that teachers are more often than not left on their own to manage this array of stressors. After practicing a few simple breathing techniques, teachers learned that mindfulness practices through the CARE program can provide them the strategies they need to be more effective teachers and to have a greater sense of well-being as teachers. A second cohort of CARE teachers opted for a two-day weekend, plus two additional Saturdays, each spaced three weeks apart.

One Teacher’s Experience

Eileen Rausch participated with the first cohort of CARE teachers. She is a teacher who had taught previously in the Los Angeles Unified School District and then moved closer to her family where she was able to teach in Harrisburg. Now, in her ninth year of teaching, she had adjusted to many changes in education and many challenges of teaching and learning in urban settings. She experienced district demands in both locations, but after learning more about mindfulness, she has been more able to respond effectively to demanding administrators and parents as well as to her students whose own emotions can often resemble a ride on a roller coaster. Stability has been difficult for her to find in public education. She has been in three different schools, three different grade levels, and three different teaching roles. Eileen describes it with one word—“Chaos! That’s where mindfulness comes in!” she joyfully exclaimed. She recognized that either way, she would be “changed anyway.” District mandates and expectations had negatively affected her in the past, causing her to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and frustrated. Eileen was determined not to be “that infuriated teacher she too often observed.” She was feeling drained, “like a hamster, running and running on its wheel.” She was certain there were “better ways to do it.” She wanted to have strategies that would help her not be reactive but rather responsive to her students. Eileen clearly stated that she was “open to change.”

One of the first CARE activities she did with the workshop group was to make lists of all the things she did after work and then categorize them as things she did for others and things she did for herself. Predictably, the latter list was the shorter list. It was clear evidence that change was needed. Eileen connected quickly with the content of the CARE sessions, as they felt comfortable to her. She had been teaching PATHS for years, so she knew about calming down like Twiggle the turtle does. However, she knew it to be something that she taught and expected of her students but not something that she regularly practiced herself. She also felt that the CARE sessions aligned well with the professional development she had experienced from Responsive Classroom. So CARE was “fitting” with other district initiatives for social and emotional learning. This was an important alignment. Mindfulness in education supports teachers just as the SEL programs implemented in the school district support their students. Academic learning in the classroom requires calm, proactive, and respectful relationships.

Some of Eileen’s favorite CARE workshop activities were learning about how the brain works and what it means to do mindfulness practices. She enjoyed the music that was playing as she arrived to each session and always found the CARE facilitators to be so warm and inviting. The whole space was welcoming. She enjoyed getting to hear the thoughts and feelings of her colleagues and found it comforting to know they shared similar thoughts and feelings as she did. Her sense of isolation seemed to melt away as she found out that others have similar feelings to hers.

Eileen has enhanced some of her instructional practices in the classroom with mindfulness attributes. Previously, before leading her class to the library, she would ask for reminders about how walking down the hallway would look to others so that students could visualize their expected hallway behaviors. This is a Responsive Classroom strategy. Now she asks them to be attentive to how the heels of their feet feel and then the balls of the feet followed by the toes as they meet the hallway tiles while they progress down the hall. This is mindful walking. This enables safe and quiet travel, but it also provides a smooth transition that helps prepare them for the new setting. Later, students may write about the experience of being really present while completing a mundane activity. Activities such as mindful walking and eating bring present-moment-focused awareness to what is happening. Mindful activities activate the prefrontal cortex in the brain where cognitive thinking and learning occur. Mindful eating helped to improve Eileen’s nutritional habits and overall improved her health.

Eileen enjoys her personal copy of a guided practice CD. It has short sessions of mindful practice that always end with the gift of peace to oneself. Eileen’s most surprisingly favorite mindfulness activity was the “stage thing.” Although skeptical and a bit apprehensive, Eileen stood inside the circle of her CARE colleagues. Slowly, she turned and faced each one while they simply provided her a warm, focused smile. She thought she would not like this, but it turned out to be quite empowering as she felt their sincere well-wishing. It was relaxing for Eileen to be in a pleasant neutral setting for CARE while feeling safe and valued by her professional colleagues.

Eileen says she leads a more mindful daily life at school, home, and within her extended family. Her mindfulness practices help her to “unplug from reality” on arrival home each day. She feels able to turn off her brain. She feels more skilled at “letting things go.” This is an essential skill for those who work in schools and especially in high-poverty schools. The challenge of not taking on the pain and suffering that students have is very difficult for many caring teachers.

Eileen feels that most teachers would benefit from learning more about mindfulness in education and programs like CARE. “If you really want to be there, you will be, but it probably won’t work if you are forced to do it.”

Eileen’s participation in CARE has had a broad impact on her daily life and sense of professionalism. Even though things are particularly unstable this year in the school district with an unexpected change in governance and district leadership, Eileen has had no sick days at all and has only had one cold. This is important to her, as she has recognized in past years that if she got sick and had to take time off, she lost coherence with her students, and their academic progress was compromised. She regularly takes a yoga class each week. She reads about child development and how to translate mindfulness practices into useful classroom strategies. She is better able to handle interpersonal issues with colleagues and is a more effective problem solver. Most of all, Eileen happily exclaims, “I love my kids! Now, I know I’ll be okay in any classroom I am assigned! I take my best practices tools with me everywhere!”

Today, this school district has dozens of teachers who have completed the CARE workshops and are practicing mindfulness at school and in their daily lives. They recognize the normalcy of stress in their personal lives and the extreme presence of stress in their professional lives. They now feel more confident to manage the stressors of urban public education. They have strengthened the resources, skills, and positive qualities they have always had within but previously did not know how best to use. Chaotic times may still occur in their schools, but peace is more visible in their faces, in their teacher practices, and in their interactions with students and others in their schools.