Our Team

Lauren Porosoff

Lauren Porosoff presents and writes about how students and teachers can bring their values to their learning, work, and relationships. An educator with 18 years of classroom experience, Lauren has developed applications of contextual behavioral science to various education practices, including instructional design, social-emotional learning, and professional development. She’s presented on these topics at conferences of various professional organizations, including Learning & the Brain, NCTE, NAESP, and ASCD; and for regional associations of independent schools including AISNE, ISACS, NJAIS, NCAIS, NWAIS, NYSAIS, SAIS, and VAIS.

Articles about Empowering Students to Access Their Values at School

Four Problems With “Show Me What You Know” (AMLE Magazine, August 2020): Assessing knowledge with meaningful, equitable, and student-centered approaches.
How Our Word Choices Can Empower Our Students (Kappan, November 2018): Choose words that help empower our students to discover where they are as learners, what seems important to them, how well their learning strategies serve them, and what else they could try.
Moving From Telling Our Stories to Inviting Stories (AMLE Magazine, April 2018): Get beyond writing that argues, informs, or narrates.
Motivating Students to Turn the Page on Reading (Kappan, October 2017): Frame schoolwork not as a precondition for an outcome but as a component of a meaningful life.

Articles about Empowering Teachers Through Professional Learning

Jailbreak Your PD (Kappan, April 2020): Educators can benefit from a variety of professional learning opportunities outside the education field.
The Power of In-House Professional Development (Independent School magazine, Fall 2017): Structure PD to tap into in-house expertise.
Healing from Moral Injury (Teaching Tolerance Issue 51, Fall 2015): Overcome acts of injustice at school by showing self-compassion, recommitting to students, and continuing to act for justice.
Values in Context: The Importance of Teachers Exploring Their Own Values (Independent School, Summer 2015): How contact with personal values can improve our teaching.

Articles about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Curriculum

Why I’ll Never Teach This Powerful Book Again (Teaching Tolerance blog, March 2018): A response to allegations against the author of a former English 6 book.
Teaching for Racial Justice (Solution Tree blog, September 2017): Reimagine academic units as contexts for anti-bias work.
Now-based Curriculum (Teaching Tolerance blog, .August 2017): Teach academic content and social justice action using current events.
How I Teach about the Holocaust as Living Memory Fades (PBS NewsHour, May 2016): How people’s thinking about the Holocaust has shifted, and why it’s important to continue to teach its history.
A Midsummer Night’s Gender Diversity (Rethinking Schools, Fall 2015): Use classic texts to teach about the gender spectrum.

Jonathan Weinstein

Jonathan Weinstein, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and suicide prevention coordinator with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at New York Medical College. Prior to working with veterans, he was an early contributor to the Mississippi Center for Contextual Psychology at the University of Mississippi. He participated in the development of relational frame theory and acceptance and commitment therapy during his graduate training. He has presented at multiple international and regional conferences on topics relating to contextual behavioral approaches to suicide prevention and acceptance and commitment therapy in groups.

Articles in Scholarly Journals

Drake, C. E., Kellum, K. K., Wilson, K. G., Luoma, J. B., Weinstein, J. H., & Adams, C. H. (2010). Examining the implicit relational assessment procedure: Four preliminary studies. The Psychological Record, 60(1), 81-100.
Weinstein, J. H., Wilson, K. G., Drake, C. E., & Kellum, K. K. (2008). A Relational Frame Theory Contribution to Social Categorization. Behavior and Social Issues, 17(1), 40-65.
Griffin, K. W., Mahadeo, M., Weinstein, J.H., & Botvin, G. J. (2006). Program implementation fidelity and substance use outcomes among middle school students in a drug abuse prevention program. Health and Addictions/Salud y Drogas, 6(1), 7-26.

Articles in Professional Media

To Prevent School Shootings, Can Mental Health Be Taught? (PBS NewsHour, March 2018): How teachers can step up to the challenge of empowering our most vulnerable students.
Summer Self-Care All Year Long (Solution Tree blog, July 2017): Finding ways to stay in “summer mode.”

Photos: Roman Iwasiwka

Our Story

Lauren and Jonathan grew up in neighboring towns but didn’t meet until 1992, through a mutual friend. After many years apart, they reconnected on social media and were married in 2010. As Lauren described her ongoing mission as a teacher—to make school meaningful for students—Jonathan quickly realized that she would benefit from learning about contextual behavioral science (CBS), which is all about helping people find meaning and purpose in life by connecting their actions to their values, and accepting the pain and struggle that always comes along with living a meaningful life.

Although Lauren resisted at first, she and Jonathan eventually started to discuss the interconnections between her work as a progressive educator and his as a CBS-trained clinical psychologist. Together, they developed a variety of CBS applications for education, in areas ranging from instructional design to social-emotional learning to professional development. Lauren and Jonathan live in New York with their two spectacular children, Lauren’s extremely generous parents, and a cat named Benedict. When they’re not nerding out about relational frame theory or arguing about whose turn it is to make the kids’ lunch, Lauren and Jonathan enjoy hiking, cooking, high-concept fantasy shows, and cake.