Bio
Patricia (Tish) Jennings is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of social and emotional learning and mindfulness in education and Professor of Education at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. 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 (5000+) theoretical article "The Prosocial Classroom." Jennings 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 and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. She is currently the Principal Investigator of two large school-based studies of CARE funded by the US Department of Education, Education Innovation Research (EIR). Project CATALYZE is a $4M study examining whether CARE enhances the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning curriculum. Project ENGAGE is an $8M study to develop and evaluate a scaling model for CARE involving 66 elementary schools across Virginia and Kentucky. She is a co-author of Flourish: The Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated health and physical education program and is co-Investigator on the Compassionate Schools Project, a large $11M randomized controlled trial that found positive effects on attention skills, several SEL skills, and behavioral indicators, particularly in schools serving high-poverty communities. Based on these data, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has designated Flourish “promising.” 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 2024 Joseph E. Zins Distinguished Scientist Award For Outstanding Contributions to Action Research in Social and Emotional Learning from CASEL, the 2023 UVA Distinguished Researcher Award, the 2018 Cathy Kerr Award for Courageous and Compassionate Science from the Mind & Life Institute and 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, Teacher Burnout Turnaround: Strategies for Empowered Educators, 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.
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