Karen Stone-McCown
Karen Stone-McCown is a pioneer leader in social & emotional learning (SEL) and gifted education. She won the Educator of the Year Award after founding the Nueva School, a National School of Excellence in California. She also co-founded Six Seconds, an SEL teaching organization which operates in over 160 nations, and the Synapse School, an SEL laboratory school in Silicon Valley. Karen was Director of the Central Asia Institute while it opened 300 schools in remote regions of Central Asia.
Karen Stone-McCown founded the Nueva School for gifted and talented children in Silicon Valley in 1967. She served as the school’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees for 35 years, guiding the selection of teachers and working with them to carry out the Nueva Philosophy. Inspired by interviewing Nobel Laureates and other gifted people about what they wished they had learned in school, Karen found that all said they would have had better lives if they had understood how to relate better to themselves and other people. Karen then enrolled in the University of Massachusetts, and under a Ford Foundation Grant, researched Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). She included the results of this study in her plan for the Nueva School. Karen then pioneered the teaching of “Self Science,” offering classes for all Nueva students in kindergarten to eighth grade.
Karen’s goal was demonstrating a superb new kind of schooling (Mission 1) and helping transform education based on what was learned at Nueva (Mission II).
Nueva became a national demonstration center for best practices in education, training thousands of teachers each year, and distributing materials and curriculum. Awards for Nueva include selection as a Model Demonstration Site for the National Teachers Corps, and the United States Department of Education Award as a National School of Excellence. Karen won the Educator of the Year Award from the California Association for the Gifted in 1981.
Emotional Intelligence
A visit with Karen and Daniel Goleman, Chief Science Writer for the New York Times, led him to write the popular book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. He included a chapter about the EQ program at Nueva in the book.
Karen’s goal was demonstrating a superb new kind of schooling (Mission 1) and helping transform education based on what was learned at Nueva (Mission II).
Nueva became a national demonstration center for best practices in education, training thousands of teachers each year, and distributing materials and curriculum. Awards for Nueva include selection as a Model Demonstration Site for the National Teachers Corps, and the United States Department of Education Award as a National School of Excellence. Karen won the Educator of the Year Award from the California Association for the Gifted in 1981.
Six Seconds
Karen co-founded Six Seconds, a social and emotional learning company that trains professional coaches in schools, businesses and families around the world. Six Seconds works with UNESCO on an international Pop-up Festival with millions of students. Harvard University and The Disney Company have hosted EQ workshops for Six Seconds, the Emotional Intelligence Network.
Synapse School
Karen co-founded Synapse School in Menlo Park, CA, a school serving 300 children in K-grade 8. The school is unique in offering forefront academics, social and emotional learning and innovation in every class. Children study a change maker in society each year, and learn skills for becoming change makers themselves.
Brainwave Learning Center
Synapse School formed an alliance with Dr. Bruce McCandless of Stanford University to form the Brainwave Learning Center while Karen was Chairman. The Center is helping Stanford researchers better understand how different learning experiences drive changes in the brain. It brings together researchers, teachers and students to gain new insights into how young learners’ brains transform as they acquire new skills.
Students in kindergarten through eighth grade engage with neuroscience through lessons and activities developed by researchers and Synapse teachers, while researchers learn about brain development.
Central Asia Institute
Karen was Trustee, Treasurer and Director of the Central Asia Institute from 2004 to 2013, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote and provide community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, for remote mountain regions of Central Asia. During this time, the Institute founded 300 schools in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan and published two best-selling books, including Three Cups of Tea.
World Business Academy
Karen is a Founding Trustee of the World Business Academy, serving from 1987. The Academy’s Mission is to explore and clarify the fundamental paradigm shifts underway globally, to enable Academy Members to integrate this into their lives and businesses, and to disseminate this into the world to rekindle the human spirit in business.
San Mateo County Historical Museum
Karen served on the Board of the San Mateo County Historical Museum in Redwood City, CA, a vibrant local museum featuring the cultures of Hispanic and Ohlone people, surfers and entrepreneurs.
Women and Girls’ Center in Rural Pakistan
Karen founded a Center for Women and Girls and provided a water system for Zudukhan, Pakistan, a community that had no clean water for hundreds of years without women walking down a thousand foot cliff and carrying water back up.
Education
Karen graduated in nursing from Northwestern University. She earned an MA in Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1972, where she participated in a Ford Foundation grant.
She also studied at Stanford University.