ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHOLE grew out of a cohort of educators and experts who were not ready to go home after finishing our earlier book, Humanizing the Education Machine.

Bill Latham was the catalyst for that book. He came to me because I had developed a process that resolved complex problems in large capital projects and corporate cultures. Bill and his team at MeTEOR Education persuaded me to use our MindShift process to help them in their quest to re-humanize the classroom. That book became the spark for change we all hoped it might be.

At our final gathering, we toasted one another, sang "So Long, Farewell," hugged, and went back to our respective fields in education, architecture, psychology, and various places in the corporate world. But, MeTEOR and the educators who came together continued their crusade. They operated much like a reserve army. They continued to meet, stay in shape, study new literature, share activities, stories, experiences, and new research on a virtual project site created for the Humanize project.

Although I didn't stay very active on the site, one day I posted some questions, "What if the problem isn't disengagement? What if it's deeper? What if fatigue and burnout look like disengagement?" A loud and emotional "YES!" quickly rippled through our network. Stories poured out; teachers told why they quit. Not because they didn't care, but they were worn out. Depleted. Running on empty.

Bill suggested we dig deeper. He brought Kevin Baird into our conversation. As the co-founder of the Global Center for College & Career Readiness and with his seminal work inside the education policy world, he understood the nature and scale of the new challenge. Kevin signed on as co-author; he also bridged our research to the complexity of a national conversation.

When Michelle Kinder served as the Executive Director for the Momentous Institute, she walked me through their work in Social and Emotional Health (SEH). That work became a compass for our new WHOLE work. I knew we needed her help, her resources, and her ability to communicate a still emerging mindset to educators and the public.

Our team was complete. Bill provided the passion and belief in the cause. Kevin brought his strategic overview of the stakeholders. Michelle understood the toll on teachers. And I was the war correspondent, doing my best to make the "fog of war" understandable for the folks back home.

We also had help. A lot of help. More than 120 educators, experts, parents, students, and leaders rallied to the cause; they engaged the good fight. Although we list our most active participants in Appendix A, I must thank those who made key contributions.

Thank You, Underwriters

Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.

-Tom Peters - Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell, Fast Company, March 2001

We held four summits in four cities over fifteen months. We visited dozens of schools, working with more than 200 people. We chased the stories, gained backstage access, and arranged food, transportation, and technology. We recorded the events, studied the research, and pulled clear signals from the noise.

None of that could have happened without the support, the networks, and the guidance of MeTEOR Education, the DLR Group, Carroll Daniel Construction, Paragon Furniture, Interior Concepts, the Mein Company, Tarkett, and In2 Architecture.

Each firm is a leader in the K-12 market. I want to extend a personal thank you to Jim French, Brian Daniel, Mark Hubbard, Remco Bergsma, Russ Nagel, Jonathan Stanley, and Irene Nigaglioni. Their willingness to support and assign some of their best talent to our work, share research, and open doors paved the way for many warm and welcoming site visits and interviews. Instead of coming in as strangers, we were received as friends of the family.

Thank You, Summit Hosts

I thank Matt Wunder, the CEO and one of the founders of DaVinci School in Los Angeles, and Carla Levenson, their Director of External Relations, for hosting our California summit. DaVinci is a distinctive ecosystem of five free public charter schools, serving 108 zip codes. They also coordinated our tour to RISE, an exceptional high school serving about 200 homeless students in South Central Los Angeles. DaVinci School provides an extraordinary model for innovative twenty-first-century learning-within the urban struggles faced by many students and their families. I get inspired each time I visit and hear the new stories of kids thriving. Matt represents the school administrator of the future. His entrepreneurial approach designed a solution fit for the school's demographic. To do that forced him to build a public-private partnership of support inside a traditional urban public school district and continue to walk the line between the competing agendas from all sides.

Matthew Haworth, the Chairman of Haworth, headquartered in Holland, Michigan, has been a friend for several decades. I reached out to Matthew when I read the story of Holland in James and Debra Fallows' book, Our Towns. I described our mission and desire to dig deeper into Holland's education and community story. He immediately offered to host our summit at their beautiful and inspiring headquarters. Matthew also made personal calls, opening doors to community and school leaders for us.

I also thank Dan Beerens, another longtime friend and a nationally recognized educator, who also lives in Holland. Dan served as our tour guide for the five schools, giving us the advantage of being accompanied by someone who knew everyone we met.

Dr. John Gasko hosted our final summit at the University of North Texas in Dallas. He took us deep into social emotional literacy. We learned how to process emotional and polarizing topics with the help of students from Cry Havoc Theater, led by Mara Richards Bim. Will Richey, founder of Journeyman INK, introduced us to his tribe of artists, and ushered us into their world of transforming students who carry deep and painful wounds. Will took us into his Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas for a stirring evening at DaVerse Lounge. Dr. Jay Faber, a psychiatrist who specializes in neuroimaging, walked us through brain images ranging from healthy, to ADHD, to chronic stress, to the damage of trauma. We learned why the practices of social and emotional health restore much of this damage.

Thank You, Specialists

Good editors are like magicians. They bring the writer's intent to life. Ed Chinn is more than a good editor. He traveled to our summits, met and interviewed the participants, and joined the process. WHOLE was his fourth MindShift book project. When he received my manuscript, it was like a crisp handoff from a quarterback to a seasoned running back who knew the play and found the end zone. His experience and our relationship go beyond editing to collaborating. While I was in the weeds of writing, he often helped me see a clearer path or sharper angle.

Michael Lagocki, the illustrator for the book, designed the cover (his first for a MindShift book) and a companion comic book. He is more than an artist; he choreographs our summits. I build the theme and establish the goal, but Michael designs and manages the flow and rhythm. One of the main reasons our summits attract distinguished thought leaders is they have never experienced an event like what Michael designs. Many have told me they've never participated in enterprises that challenged, informed, inspired, and produced the level of collaborative work like MindShift. Thank you, Michael.

Richard Narramore has served as my Senior Editor at Wiley for four books. He has also coached me with great skill and finesse through each project. When I presented WHOLE, he validated our topic but felt it would be better stewarded in another division of Wiley. He generously introduced us to his counterpart at Jossey-Bass. Thank you, Richard, for your endorsement and preparation for this project.

Marilyn Dennison, a crucial part of the DLR Group team and a former assistant school superintendent, became an invaluable guide for our team. She helped us to better understand the needs of students and teachers. Marilyn also explained how her team leads a school district outside its comfort zone and into transformation.

Dr. Lynn Frickey has been one of our strongest supporters. Her career work with high-risk students helped us appreciate the very human side of our work. But, she also brought the academic rigor we needed to collaborate with educators.

There would be no WHOLE without Irene Nigaglioni, Chelsea Poulin, Ed Chinn, and Lisa Miller. As a team, they created a book cover using the Japanese art form of Kintsugi to convey the beauty of broken lives finding wholeness through education.

I invited Joe Tankersley, a longtime colleague, futurist, former Disney Imagineer, and master of storytelling to join our Holland summit. Joe went far beyond his workshop. He helped three students from Hamilton High School and their superintendent with the work and helped me integrate that work into the book.

Those three Holland High students-Colin, Haleigh, and Luke-developed a project and provided the material for one of our most important chapters, Having the Stress Conversation in Your School. Their superintendent,...