Hacking School Culture: Designing Compassionate Classrooms

If you could teach all kids empathy, tolerance, and compassion, wouldn't teaching all things be easier? Bullying prevention and character building programs are deepening our awareness of how today's kids struggle and how we might help, but many agree: They aren't enough to create school cultures where students and staff flourish. This inspired Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray to begin seeking out systems and educators who were getting things right.

Read it today--fix it tomorrow

Their experiences taught them that the real game changers are using a human-centered approach. Inspired by other design thinkers, many teachers are creating learning environments where seeking a greater understanding of themselves and others is the highest standard. They're also realizing that compassion is best cultivated in the classroom, not the boardroom or the auditorium. It's here that we learn how to pull one another close. It's here that we begin to negotiate the distances between us, too.

Ready to begin but uncertain how? Here's what you'll find inside:

• Protocols that inspire strengths-focused teaching and learning


• Tools for starting hard conversations, coaching critical questioning, and sustaining respectful communication


• Experiential learning models that improve school culture


• Approaches that encourage activism while enabling people to resolve conflicts peacefully


• Design thinking strategies that empower human-centered decision-making

Compassionate classrooms are built one learner at a time. Be that learner. It's time.