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About the Authors

Christine Mason, PhD, an educational psychologist, has over thirty years of experience as a classroom teacher; college professor; educational leader; and researcher; and seventeen years of experience as a yoga, mindfulness, and meditation teacher. She presents experiential workshops for school principals and teachers. Mason is the founder and executive director of the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to uplift schools with teachers and principals who are caring, compassionate, and knowledgeable about learning and teaching. CEI focuses on mindfulness; social-emotional learning; and early childhood science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

An expert in childhood trauma, Mason has experience teaching and developing teacher-mentor and youth dropout prevention programs in high-poverty urban areas. She is the developer of Heart Beaming®, a meditative practice for classroom mind breaks. Her workshops incorporate up-to-date research on brain neuroplasticity, scientific evidence, and practical activities to reduce stress, lessen the impact of trauma, and improve teacher morale and job satisfaction.

Mason has experience as a principal at an international boarding school in India. She served as executive director of research and professional development for the National Association of Elementary School Principals, where she conducted investigations to improve response to intervention, principal knowledge of the Common Core State Standards, and principal mentoring. As a senior scientist in disability education, she led research on quality of life for youth and adults with disabilities. As a senior research associate at the Council for Exceptional Children, she investigated student self-direction, teacher mentoring, and inclusive education. Mason has authored several books and research reports, including books on teacher mentoring and universal design for learning, and research reports on student self-determination, scenario-based planning, principal mentoring, urban schools, integrating the arts in schools, and inclusive education. She has presented internationally on mindfulness, trauma, Heart Centered Learning™, visions for 21st century instruction, yoga, meditation, and student self-determination.

Mason is credentialed through the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association and Radiant Child Yoga (a Yoga Alliance registered school). She has been a yoga practitioner for over twenty years and a yoga and meditation instructor since 2001, teaching classes at a local recreation center and offering workshops for teachers and students of all ages. She was trained directly by Yogi Bhajan, who brought Kundalini yoga to the West from India in 1968.

Early in her career, Mason received an award as researcher of the year from Montana State University. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Ashoka named her a pioneer in children’s well-being in 2016.

She received her doctorate in educational psychology at The Ohio State University, with post-doctoral research at the University of Washington and a fellowship to further inclusive education practices in India.

To learn more about Mason’s work, visit www.edimprovement.org or follow @Edimprove on Twitter.

Michele M. Rivers Murphy, EdD, is an independent educational consultant at KIDS FIRST! and a research associate and consultant for the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI). Rivers Murphy has served as a transformational change agent in some of the highest-needs neighborhoods and districts, cultivating a community education and shared responsibility approach. Through strong networking, positive relationship building, a laser-sharp focus on student strengths, and collective vision and action by stakeholders, she has maximized or redistributed resources and facilitated positive, compassionate school culture transformation.

Rivers Murphy coauthored the School Compassionate Culture Analytic Tool for Educators (S-CCATE) and created a 21st century, full-service, innovative school community model, supported by an equity framework and driven by the pedagogy principles of confidence, to inspire high intellectual performance. She presented her 21st century, high-performing public school solution for high-needs neighborhoods and districts to the Massachusetts secretary of education and facilitated a pilot study using the S-CCATE as an envisioning tool and guide for transformational school culture change. She also is facilitating CEI research regarding Heart Centered Learning, with the foundational practices of mindfulness and mindful leadership.

Rivers Murphy has over eight years of direct educational supervisory experience and several Massachusetts’ certifications at all levels, in both administration (superintendent and principal) and teaching (K–12), including special education. She has developed an innovative, positive alternative to in-school and out-of-school suspension, eliminating in-school suspension completely and decreasing out-of-school suspension by 75 percent through positive relationship building and individual accountability. Rivers Murphy also expanded high-needs programming to a mainstream setting, with a focus on real-life practice, service, and community connection, authoring a paraprofessional manual and ten individual Massachusetts’ disability manuals for school leaders, teachers, and support staff to utilize when servicing students.

Rivers Murphy obtained a doctorate in educational leadership (K–12) from Northeastern University. Her doctoral thesis specifically addresses the gap between what students are learning in school and what they need to know to prepare for college, career, and life in the 21st century.

To learn more about Rivers Murphy’s work, follow @Rivers.Murphy on Twitter.

Yvette Jackson, EdD, is an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York and senior scholar for the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education. Jackson’s passion is assisting educators in cultivating their confidence and competence to unlock the giftedness in all students. She is driven to provide and promote pedagogy that enables students who are disenfranchised and marginalized to demonstrate their strengths and innate intellectual potential. Jackson’s approach, called Pedagogy of Confidence, helps educators believe in and value these students and optimize student success, which for Jackson, is the basis of equity consciousness.

Jackson is a former teacher and has served New York City Public Schools as director of gifted programs and executive director of instruction and professional development. She continues to work with school districts to customize and systemically deliver the collegial, strengths-based High Operational Practices of the Pedagogy of Confidence that integrate culture, language, and cognition to engage and elicit the innate potential of all students for self-actualization and contributions to our world. Jackson has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Urban Superintendents Program, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University, the Feuerstein Institute, and Thinking Schools International.

In 2012, the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences International honored Jackson with its Educators’ Voice Awards for education policy/researcher of the year. She has applied her research in neuroscience, gifted education, literacy, and the cognitive mediation theory of the eminent cognitive psychologist, Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, to develop integrated processes that engage and elicit high-intellectual performances from students who are underachieving. This work is the basis for her award-winning book, The Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools. Jackson also coauthored Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership and Unlocking Student Potential: How Do I Identify and Activate Student Strengths? with Veronica McDermott.

Jackson received a bachelor of arts from Queens College, City University of New York with a double major in French and education, and a master’s degree in curriculum design, master of education, and doctor of education in educational administration all from Teachers College, Columbia University.

To book Christine Mason, Michele M. Rivers Murphy, or Yvette Jackson for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.