Published in association with Teaching the Whole Student is a compendium of engaged teaching approaches by faculty across disciplines. These inspiring authors offer models for instructors who care deeply about their students, respect and recognize students’ social identities and lived experiences, and are interested in creating community and environments of openness and trust to foster deep-learning, academic success, and meaning-making.The authors in this volume stretch the boundaries of academic learning and the classroom experience by seeking to identify the space between subject matter and a student's core values and prior knowledge. They work to find the interconnectedness of knowledge, understanding, meaning, inquiry and truth. They appreciate that students bring their full lives and experiences—their heart and spirit—into the classroom just as they bring their minds and intellectual inquiry. These approaches contribute to student learning and the core academic purposes of higher education, help students find meaning and purpose in their lives, and help strengthen our diverse democracy through students’ active participation and leadership in civic life. They also have a demonstrated impact on critical and analytical thinking, student retention and academic success, personal well-being, commitments to civic engagement, diversity, and social justice.Topics discussed:• Teacher-student relationships and community building• How teaching the whole student increases persistence and completion rates• How an open learning environment fosters critical understanding• Strategies for developing deep social and personal reflection in experiential education and service learningThe authors of this book remind us in poignant and empirical ways of the importance of teaching the whole student, as the book's title reflects.

Understanding the Whole Student presents a holistic approach to multicultural educational issues by viewing them in terms of the student as a physical, psychosocial, cognitive, ethical, and spiritual being. Conversely, these levels of a student's being cannot be seen apart from the student's cultural identities. This unique book demonstrates that, in a pluralistic democracy, good teaching and deep learning must be multicultural and must look at the student as a whole being, not just as a future worker in a transnational corporate economy as is currently the case with both neo-liberal and neo-conservative programs for 'reform.' The authors contend that good education is, and must be, multicultural in order to gain a deeper perspective on issues under analysis in the classroom through the sharing and negotiating of many different cultural perspectives.

Nurturing the Whole Student: Five Dimensions of Teaching and Learning begins with the assumption that education is at its best—healthiest, most engaging, and most effective—when it is holistic. By holistic , the authors mean that the various dimensions of the teacher and student are honored and nurtured throughout the education process. These dimensions are organic, psychodynamic, cultural, academic, and existential. Nurturing the Whole Student contends that any truly humane educational theory or practice must celebrate and cultivate these facets of the student-teacher relationship. In readily-accessible theoretical terms—as well as in practical suggestions for classroom application—the authors demonstrate how holistic education is an antidote to the standardized approaches to education that breed failure, alienation, and discouragement in the classroom. Systematically broken down into five thematic chapters, this teacher's guide will help any educator foster the five dimensions of teaching and learning.

This book proposes a new way of categorizing curricula in the holistic educational traditional. This is an idea that goes back in the Western tradition at least as far as Plato, and Lao Tzu in the Eastern tradition. It is certainly present in Spinoza and Schopenhauer. It is called a “holarchy”. The idea of a holarchy gives rise to Integrative Curriculum Theory, which, with major modifications, draws on Ken Wilber’s in his evolutionary model of the development of consciousness at personal, cultural and ontological realms. Integrative Curriculum Theory will: 1) Prove a useful addition to the holistic repertoire of systematic and, above all, humane terminologies and “technologies” for making and evaluating specific curricula as well as for theorizing the curriculum at a time when “scientistic,” “technist” and profit-driven views of education have commandeered the podium, policy, and praxis and 2) address some areas of concern that with certain holistic models of education, and 3) address some problems in Wilber’s integral model of psychological, cultural, and spiritual evolution.

Whole student education needs to overcome 3 key challenges in order to establish a true culture of learning where each individual student can thrive. Kalyan Balaven examines these hurdles in great detail and offers guidance informed by research and practice. Citing to classical theorists, educational pundits, and a key teacher’s journal, Balaven offers a 3-part recipe for serving whole student education.

Through the voices of dozens of seasoned college faculty and junior and senior students, this book shares insights and practical examples on how a college campus can be “HIP”—utilizing high-impact educational practices widely and effectively. The book’s strength is numerous hands-on examples about HIPs’ implementation in and out of the classroom. HIPs have been proven to improve student learning, yet practical examples of their implementation are still few. This book fills that gap. Covering seven (sets of) HIPs, we ask such questions as: What do creative assignments based on active learning look like? How does one teach the “whole student?” How does and should student diversity affect teaching? The book is most beneficial to current and future instructors of college courses, especially those wanting to use more active learning pedagogies. It will also benefit university administrators and staff by identifying campus priorities, culture, and structure that support the effective implementation of HIPs. It makes the case for a campus-wide adoption of high-impact practices, across disciplines and in both academic and co-curricular life.

Creating Safe and Supportive Schools and Fostering Students’ Mental Health provides pre- and in-service educators with the tools they need to prevent, pre-empt, handle, and recover from threats to students’ mental health. School safety and fostering a supportive learning environment have always been issues fundamental to educators. Over the last decade, teachers and administrators have been called on more than ever to cope with bullying, suicide, and violence in their schools. Handling every stage of this diverse set of obstacles can be unwieldy for teachers and administrators alike. Framed with interviews from experts on each of the topics, and including practical and applicable examples, this volume draws together the work of top-tier school psychologists into a text designed to work with existing school structures and curricula to make schools safer. A comprehensive and multi-faceted resource, this book integrates leading research with the well-respected Framework for Safe and Successful Schools to help educators support school safety, crisis management, and students' mental health. Featuring interviews with: Dewey G. Cornell, Frank DeAngelis, Beth Doll, Kevin Dwyer, Katie Eklund, Maurice J. Elias, Michele Gay, Ross W. Greene, Rob Horner, Jane Lazarus, Richard Lieberman, Troy Loker, Melissa A. Louvar-Reeves, Terry Molony, Shamika Patton, Donna Poland, Scott Poland, Eric Rossen, Susan M. Swearer, Ken Trump, and Frank Zenere.