Teachers Aligned

Senator Mike Fanning represents District 17 in South Carolina which includes Chester, Fairfield and York Counties. A military veteran and former high school social studies teacher, Senator Fanning has been a strong advocate for public education in South Carolina. In this episode, he discusses the importance of educators being involved in politics and provides valuable insights on current legislation that will impact the lives of teachers and their students.

Mike's Recommendations

SC Statehouse Website

Mathew Portell has dedicated a decade and a half to education in his role as a teacher, instructional coach, teacher mentor, and school administrator. It is through the collaborative team approach and building positive relationships that Portell is leading his school into success. He is currently in his fifth year as principal of Fall-Hamilton Elementary, an internationally recognized innovative model school for trauma-informed practices in Metro Nashville Public Schools. The school’s work has been featured on National Public Radio, the local documentary Enough, PBS, and Edutopia, one of the world’s top educational practices website funded by the George Lucas Foundation which resulted in over 7,000,000 views. 

He is the founder of the Trauma-Informed Educators Schools Network Group on Facebook which has connected over 20,000 educators in over 100 different countries! In July 2019, he launched the first annual Trauma Informed Educators Network conference which was attended by 150 people from around the world! In September of 2019, he launched the Trauma Informed Educators Network Podcast. Through this podcast he is viewing educators and practitioners from around the globe in which they are sharing their own trauma-informed journeys.

Mathew's Book/Resource Recommendations

The Trauma-Informed Educators Network 

The Trauma-Informed Educators Network Podcast

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke, MD

The Trauma-Informed School: A Step-by-Step Implementation Guide for Administrators and School Personnel by Jim Sporleder and Heather T. Forbes

Fostering Resilient Learners: Strategies for Creating a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom by Kristin Souers and Pete Hall

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook--What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

If you are interested in connecting and collaborating with Mathew, you can e-mail him at [email protected].

Lucy MacGregor leads adventure based programs that empower young women and offers mindfulness workshops, retreats, and communities of practice to educators, parents and families in North Carolina and beyond.  

​Jelena (Yelena) Popovic is a Teaching Peace in Schools leadership council lead for The Peace Alliance (www.peacealliance.org), U.N certified cross-cultural facilitator, Mindful Schools Training Team Member (www.mindfulschools.org), brain science buff, school psychologist, Relax Kids trainer/coach (www.relaxkids.com) and mindfulness educator. She is also a trainer facilitating cross-cultural dialogue for Soliya (www.soliya.net)

As a team, Lucy and Jelena work together to deliver customized, sustainable and embedded implementation of mindfulness practices within educational settings though their unique Communities Of Practice model. You can read more about their work at https://www.designtoconnect.net/.

Lucy & Jelena's Book Recommendations

Erin Fox is originally from Murphy, North Carolina, and she received her BSED in Secondary English Education from Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.  She earned her master’s degree in Gifted and Talented Education several years later from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  Fox was initially hired at Gaffney High School to be an English II teacher. During her seventeen years at Gaffney High she has taught Advanced Drama, Drama I, Introduction to Drama, Theatrical Movement, Academic Assistance, English I, English II, and English III.  She loves the teaching opportunities that exploring literature and English Language Arts provides for her students and herself.  As she works to challenge them, they challenge her as well, and she loves to infuse their work with kinesthetic/tactile lessons and artistic endeavors.  Fox wants to provide students with personal ways to interact with the literature so that it speaks to their individual hearts in very real ways.  She loves working with students in a variety of ways but most especially through the Fit2gether committee, the Miss Cherokeean Pageant, and the Homecoming Committee.  Fox serves as the CCSD Employee Wellness Coordinator and creates and leads twice weekly workouts with faculty and staff members and their families across the district. She is married to her best friend, Danny Fox, and they have two children: a twelve-year old son, Jack, and an eight-year old daughter, Scout.

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be

The Badass Life: 30 Amazing Days to a Lifetime of Great Habits - Body, Mind, and Spirit

If you are interested in connecting and collaborating with Erin, you can e-mail her at [email protected] 

Techa Smalls-Brown is an artist in every sense of the word. Using her gifts to add beauty wherever she goes, Techa has been an educator for 20+ years with the Charleston County School District. As a teacher she has taught exceptional children, African-American studies at the secondary level, and  Elementary Montessori. She is also endorsed as a Gifted and Talented Teacher and has recently completed the Omega Institute’s Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL) program under the direction of Meena Srinivasan, Daniel Rechtschaffen and Linda Lantieri. As a result of this work, she is equipped to integrate mindfulness-based social-emotional techniques in academics as well as focusing on equity and ethical learning in schools and school systems. Techa is a true visionary. Currently she is working on an M. Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Trauma and Resilience in  educational settings through Concordia University, Portland. With this degree, Techa seeks to transform the lives of students and educators across the state teaching them about trauma, resilience, self-care as well as how to support students social, emotional, and academic development in education. Techa is married to her soul mate, Michael J. Brown who has been a part of her life for over 23 years.

Techa's Book/Resource Recommendations

Dr. Amy Saltzman is a holistic physician, mindfulness coach, long-time athlete, devoted student of transformation, wife, mother and occasional poet. Her passion is supporting people of all ages in achieving peak performance and finding flow. She is recognized by her peers as a visionary and pioneer in the field of mindfulness for athletes, coaches, and other high performers, as well as for kids, teens, and parents. She offers individual holistic medical care, and both individual and team mindfulness coaching, in person and online, to athletes, coaches, children, adolescents, parents, teachers, therapists, allied professionals, and high tech executives and employees.

She is the author of A Still Quiet Place: A Mindfulness Program for Teaching Children and Adolescents to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions, A Still Quiet Place for Athletes: Mindfulness Skills for Achieving Peak Performance and Finding Flow in Sports and in Life, A Still Quiet Place for Teens: A Mindfulness Workbook to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions, and Teaching Mindfulness Skills to Kids and Teens.

You can read more about her work at http://www.stillquietplace.com/.

If you would like to sign up for her online training, go to http://www.stillquietplace.com/sqp-10-week-online-training/. Ask for CERRA or Teachers Aligned 10% off.

Amy's Book/Resource Recommendations

Vikas P. Srivastava holds an MA in Education from Harvard (HGSE) in Education and a BA from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in Sociology. Vikas specializes in integrating  mindfulness, nonviolence, creative confidence and an entrepreneurial mindset in educational design.  

Vikas's Book Recommendations

If you are interested in a Being Mindful Workshop, hosted by Vikas, go to https://lagracecenter.com/being-mindful-workshops/.

Jed Dearybury began his education career in 2001. During his 13 year early childhood classroom tenure, he received numerous awards. He was featured in GQ Magazine as Male Leader of the Year, met President Obama as the SC winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching, and was named as a top 5 finalist for South Carolina Teacher of the Year. Since 2015, he has become an educational leader by providing quality, hands-on, engaging learning experiences for students and teachers across the country.

Learn more about Jed's work at https://www.mrdearybury.com/.

Connect with Jed on FB, Tw, & Instagram @mrdearybury.

Jed's Book Recommendations

Patricia (Tish) Jennings is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education. She became a meditation practitioner at 17 and has taught mindful awareness practices to children and adults for over 40 years. Her research places a specific emphasis on teacher stress and how it impacts the social and emotional context of the classroom, as articulated in her highly cited theoretical article "The Prosocial Classroom."

Jennings recently led the team that developed CARE, a mindfulness-based professional development program shown to significantly improve teacher well-being, classroom interactions and student engagement in the largest randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness-based intervention designed specifically to address teacher occupational stress.

Currently, she is leading the development of the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health and physical education program designed to align with state and national health and physical education standards, and is co-Investigator on a large randomized controlled trial being conducted in Louisville, KY, to evaluate the curriculum’s efficacy.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth, she was awarded the Cathy Kerr Award for Courageous and Compassionate Science by the Mind & Life Institute in 2018 and recently recognized by Mindful Magazine as one of "Ten Mindfulness Researchers You Should Know."

Earlier in her career, Jennings spent more than 22 years as a teacher, school director and teacher educator. She is the author numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters and several books: Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom, The Trauma-Sensitive School: Building Resilience with Compassionate Teaching, and Mindfulness in the Pre-K-5 Classroom: Helping Students Stress Less and Learn More, part of Social and Emotional Learning Solutions, a book series by WW Norton of which she is editor.

Dr. Frank Morgan retired in 2018 after 43 years working in public education in Virginia and South Carolina. 

You can contact Dr. Morgan via e-mail at [email protected]