Patricia A. Jennings

Patricia (Tish) Jennings M.Ed., Ph.D. 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 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 to address teacher stress. She is currently Principal Investigator (PI) of Project CATALYZE, a study that is examining whether CARE enhances the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning curriculum. She is also PI on Project ENGAGE, a new study to develop and test a scaling model for CARE. She is a co-author of Flourish: The Compassionate Schools Project curriculum, an integrated social and emotional learning, health and physical education program. She is the author numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters and several books including 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.