Kirke Olson: The Invisible Classroom: Relationships, Neuroscience and Mindfulness in School. W. W. Norton, New York, 2014, 232 pp

Excerpt

Over the past decade, Siegel (2010, 2015), Immordino-Yang (2015) and Cozolino (2013) have elucidated the critical role interpersonal neurobiology and social neuroscience play in educational processes. In The Invisible Classroom, Kirke Olson builds upon this work by skillfully linking his academic study of neuroscience and his years of experience in the field of education. He provides understandable and practical principles, which he illustrates with stories from his own experience as both a teacher and a school psychologist. Indeed, it is his experience of transitioning from a classroom teacher to school psychologist that provides the most interesting perspectives and anecdotes. As a classroom teacher, Olson experienced the effects of the “invisible classroom” without really understanding the social and emotional forces at work in his classroom. Later, he received training as a psychologist and spent years observing teachers and students in the classroom setting, providing psychological and emotional support. This training and experience helped him to recognize and begin to understand the “invisible” factors at work in the classroom. He realized that behaviors often interpreted by teachers as problematic are rooted in social and neurocognitive patterns children develop in response to a variety of environmental factors such as trauma, abuse, neglect, and chronic stress. …