xii • PREFACE
Still, we ask our students over and over to pay attention, do their work, and try. We
teach the math, reading, science, art, social studies, and music. Yet we don’t always teach
them how to cope with the stress they are feeling as they walk into school, handle the
frustration they experience when they do try, or pay attention in the first place. Often,
we take ownership of their self-regulation through sophisticated behavior plans with
rewards and consequences. Of course, behavior plans and class-wide systems are help-
ful. However, with no eye on our students’ ultimate ability to be the masters of their own
attention, impulse control, and sustained effort, we leave them without a set of tools to
negotiate the stress inherent not only in third, eighth, and 12th grades, but also in life and
all of its challenges. Our schools are the perfect environment for teaching our students
how to be mindfully aware, manage frustration, engage with persistent effort and atten-
tion, embody intentional action, and be kind and caring to each other. We know that it
takes embodied learning, in real time, to internalize these skills and construct knowledge.
School is where this can be done.
I know all of this can feel too big and overwhelming. As a teacher you might ask
yourself, “How can I fix this? How can I make a difference with so many students in need?”
I find inspiration in The Starfish Story. It was a favorite of my mom’s, an English teacher. She
taught literature for decades in a rural upstate New York high school. No matter how big the
challenge, my mom focused on one student at a time, one book at a time, one journal entry at
a time, and one moment at a time. They called her classroom Zen-like. When I began writing
this book, I asked my dad if I could have mom’s notes so I could use her favorite quotes to
begin each chapter. In the files, I kept coming across copy after copy of The Starfish Story. It
goes like this.
Once, there was a young man walking down a deserted beach at dawn.
The tide was out, the beach wide. In the distance, he saw an old man.
Was he dancing? What was he doing? As he approached the old man,
he saw that he was picking up beached starfish and throwing them
back into the ocean. The young man gazed in wonder as he watched the
old man throw starfish after starfish into the ocean waves. Bewildered,
the young man asked the star thrower, “Why are you doing this?” The
old man explained that the starfish would die if they were left in the
morning sun. The young man looked down the expanse of the beach,
“But there must be thousands of starfish. How can you possibly make
any difference at all?” Smiling, the old man looked down at the starfish
in his hand and threw it safely into the ocean. He said, “It makes a
difference to this one.”—Eiseley (1969)This story emphasizes the importance of present moment awareness and embodied,
intentional action. It speaks as much to our role as teachers as it does to a student
doing math. It is in this moment and this action that we can make a difference. Stop, refo-
cus, breathe, and see how you can support this student learning right here and right
now. For the student, it is not in the 30 math problems ahead, the thought “How will I
ever finish?,” or the fear “Can I even get into college if math is this hard?” It is this math
problem, right here, right now. Stop, refocus, breathe, and let’s look at this problem,