Patricia Jennings

Patricia A. Jennings received a BA from Antioch College in 1977, an M. Ed. from Saint Mary's College in 1980, and a Ph.D. from the University of California Davis in 2004.[1] Before her degrees in education and human development, Jennings also studied Buddhism at the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and later founded a Montessori school that taught meditation during the late 1980s.[2]

She was an associate professor at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia until 2019, when she was promoted to Full Professor.[3] She has also served as a Research Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University.[4] Jennings’s book Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills For Peace And Productivity In The Classroom, was published in 2015.[5][6] Jennings is to co-creator of the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) program,[7] a thirty-hour mindfulness-based professional development program. The goal of the program is to help Pre-K-12 teachers deal with in-class stress.[8][7] It was tested in a clinical trial in 2017, which involved 224 elementary school teachers, evaluating the program through teacher questionnaires and classroom observations.[3] The results of the research showed that CARE can “increase teacher social and emotional competence and the quality of classroom interactions,” according to the New York Times.[9] It was the largest study of its kind to date at the time.[10] Following this, she worked on the Compassionate Schools Project research project, intended to teach and provide mindfulness skills to elementary students.[11]

Her book The Trauma-Sensitive Classroom was then published in 2019.[12] Jennings is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development among Children and Youth.[13]