1st Edition
Students Can’t Pay Attention and Other Lies I Believed 16 Lessons to Improve Foundational Skills and Reclaim Your Classroom
This powerful book from mindfulness consultant Jenny Mills helps teachers overcome daily stressors and burnout by focusing on foundational skills – for both yourself and your students. Designed with busy educators in mind, the book doesn’t add another item on people’s plates – rather, the strategies act as the plate – affording you the capacity to better hold all of the things you are managing.
The book is centered around eight lies or myths about students and teaching, dismantled with a truth, followed by an easy-to-implement foundational skills lesson for teachers and students.
Mills shows how you can build attention control, executive functioning, and social-emotional learning in both yourself and your students, to help students thrive in school and in the real world, and to help you feel fulfilled in your teaching career.
Throughout, there are personal anecdotes, pause and reflect features, easy-to-implement teacher lessons to weave into the day, and student microlessons with modifications. As you refine the foundational skills, you’ll be able to step into your power and feel more grounded and happier in your daily work in the classroom.
Acknowledgments Meet the Author 1. Laying the Foundation for Sustainable Teaching and Learning 2. The Lie: I Can Teach Kids to Read, but I Cannot Teach Kids to Focus. 3. The Lie: Some Students Cannot Pay Attention. 4. The Lie: This Job Doesn’t Afford Me the Time or Resources Needed for Adequate Self-Care. 5. The Lie: I’m Stressed Because I’m Constantly Being Asked to Do More, with Less. 6. The Lie: I Can’t Help Feeling Overwhelmed All of the Time. 7. The Lie: So and So (Insert Colleague/Boss/Student Name) Makes Me So Annoyed! 8. The Lie: To Be a Good Teacher, I Must Work around the Clock to Make Everything Perfect. 9. The Lie: Teaching Is Easier When I Can Close My Door and Do My Own Thing. Afterword
Biography
Jenny Mills, M.Ed., IMTA-P, is on a mission to change the world using mindfulness-based practices. An entrepreneur, author, international speaker and educator, Jenny believes that in order to create a sustainable teaching profession, we must develop the foundational skills of teachers and students. While serving as a special educator in NJ and Pennsylvania, Jenny realized that students and teachers lacked foundational skills like attention management, self-regulation, and emotional awareness. Without these skills, teaching and learning suffered.
Jenny developed her expertise as a meditation and mindfulness teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to open her business, Roots & Wings, LLC - a professional development organization that brings research-based interventions to K-12 schools and organizations. Jenny is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. She is the Social Emotional Learning and Trauma Coordinator at the Penn Literacy Network, creating and implementing coursework for teachers around the world.
When she isn’t busy helping teachers, she is playing Legos and Barbies with her two young children, Talula and Zachary. In her spare time, Jenny enjoys listening to podcasts, running outside, and traveling.
You can find her at www.rootsandwingsonline.org or on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/millsjenny/.
