Teaching the Whole Teen: Everyday Practices That Promote Success and Resilience in School and Life

About Jeffrey BensonRachel A. Poliner

Rachel Poliner is an educational consultant specializing in whole student approaches and change management. Her work has focused on school climate instructional and structural reforms: K-12 social and emotional learning middle and high school advisory programs high school redesign and improving faculty climate. Her in-depth approach spans classroom and school-wide structures practices and programs curriculum staff development district policies and systems and coaching administrators teams and teacher leaders. She is an author of The Advisory Guide: Designing and Implementing Effective Advisory Programs in Secondary Schools and curricula chapters and articles on personalization social-emotional learning resiliency dialogue and conflict resolution. Poliner has consulted with public and independent schools in New England and across the U.S.; has been a teacher educational organization director and a faculty member for masters degree candidates in conflict resolution education and peaceable schools. Rachel Poliner can be contacted at RachelPoliner@LeadersAndLearners.org Jeffrey Benson has worked in almost every school context in over forty years of experience in the field of education: as a teacher in elementary middle and high schools; as an instructor in undergraduate and graduate programs; as an administrator in day and residential schools. He has studied and worked side by side with national leaders in the fields of special education learning theory trauma and addiction school reform adult development and conflict resolution. He has been a consultant to public and independent schools mentored teachers and principals in varied school settings and has written on many school-based issues. He is the author of Hanging In: Strategies for Teaching the Students Who Challenge Us Most and 10 Steps to Managing Change in Schools. The core of Jeffrey Bensons work is in understanding how people learn the starting point for everything that schools should do. Jeffrey Benson can be contacted at JeffreyBenson@LeadersAndLearners.org