Claire Latane is a landscape architecture professor at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona). Her teaching and scholarship apply research connecting the mind, body, and environment to design places and processes that support mental health. Claire has practiced landscape architecture for 14 years. She has designed interactive environments for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities as well as for affordable housing communities and public parks. Claire lives in Los Angeles, where her own garden is an experiment on what will grow wild with little care but lots of love.
Latane's thorough and fascinating work on designing for student mental health leads us to the natural world, a place with infinite power to soothe and uplift everyone who engages with it. Both poetic and practical, this book examines every facet of this movement, all supported by research and results from environmental psychologists, educators, families, and students. The outcome is a compelling case for nature-driven planning and design. --Laura Solano, Partner, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Landscape Architects What timely help is found in Schools that Heal! Educators are under tremendous pressure to compensate children for the educational, social, and emotional hardships amplified by the global pandemic. This book is a must-read guide to ways that school communities can rethink and redo the indoor and outdoor environments of our schools to support student, staff, and community healing and well-being. --Mary Filardo, Executive Director, 21st Century School Fund & Coordinator, National Council on School Facilities