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Welcome to the late fall 2010 edition of the Challenge Success newsletter. We have had an exciting fall and are pleased to update you on what we have been doing as we continue to champion a broader vision of success for youth.
In this issue:
Fall events draw record crowds
Parent education is expanding
Other upcoming events and announcements
Busy fall for Challenge Success at Stanford
Challenge Success and Stanford’s School of Education drew record crowds to three showcase educational events this fall: the screening of and panel discussions of the films Waiting for Superman and a Race to Nowhere, and the 7th annual Challenge Success fall conference. Sell -out crowds attended both film screenings and had a chance to pose their questions to panelists following the showings. Whether or not one agrees with the content of these films, we hope everyone appreciates the national conversation on education that the films have spurred.
Challenge Success drew almost 1600 parents, students and educators to Memorial Auditorium to hear from Wendy Mogel, student panelists and Challenge Success Co-Founders. Wendy wowed the crowd with her common sense approach to parenting. Student panelists Megan Boesiger and Travis Anderson painted a very real picture of what it is like to be a junior or senior in high school and how they are trying to make smart choices that will bring some balance into their lives. For the first time at our fall event, CS Co-founders delivered a very interactive parent education segment aimed at giving parents and teachers hands-on tools to reduce over-scheduling and improve the health and well-being of students. Audience members worked on drafting their definitions of success and analyzed how their families are spending time on a typical day as a first step toward potentially realigning their actions with their values. DVD’s from the fall conference are now available through our website at www.challengesuccess.org.
On Saturday we spent the day with 20 school teams that attended a series of workshops on topics such as Teaching for Engagement, Students’ Views of Stress: Developing Coping Strategies, and A Balanced Approach to Sports, and worked with their school teams and CS coaches to develop action plans. These teams will work with coaches throughout the year on one or two key focus points and return to Stanford in April to share what worked well and to identify areas for continued improvement.
Parent Education expanding to meet need
Over the past 18 months, we have had a sizeable increase in demand for parent education. In response to your requests, we developed a three hour workshop, which we delivered in San Francisco in May, and a six week intensive, hands-on course. We will be offering the course, which is aimed primarily at parents of elementary school students, several times during the spring. Parents in the Kentfield School District may sign up for the course beginning February 2nd through March 16th. We will also offer the course at Stanford from April 27th to June 1st. For more information on the course and to register, visit our website. We will be partnering with our friends at Levine Academy in Dallas, Texas to pilot our first remote intensive class as well.
Additionally, we recognize that not everyone can attend a live multi-week course so we are developing materials that can be delivered on-line. We hope to launch our course materials this summer. If there are topics that you would like to see incorporated, please let us know. You can email your thought s and suggestions to Maureen Brown at mebrown@stanford.edu.
Other upcoming events and announcements
Denise Pope, along with several members of our Stanford research team, will be presenting our latest findings on student perception of teacher care at the Society for Research in Child Development conference in early April in Montreal. The gist of this research shows that the students who perceive their teachers as caring show better health and higher rates of engagement with learning in school. The papers explore how students define teacher care and what the benefits can be for diverse learners.
After much tinkering over the summer, CS launched its updated website in mid-October. There is still much to be done but we hope that you will find the site easier to navigate. Be sure to check out our calendar regularly to find a CS workshop in your community. Over the next several months we will continue to add content that we believe you will find useful. In particular, we will be adding more material to our Students and Parents sections so check the site regularly. We would also love to have you join us on Facebook. We are working on building our following so that all of our supporters can connect with one another and we can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
Mark your calendars for the 8th annual Challenge Success fall conference to be held at Stanford on September 30th and October 1st, 2011. Applications will be available to interested schools through our website beginning January 10, 2011.
We would also like to thank those of you who have supported Challenge Success so generously this year. Our work depends largely upon private funding and this year your donations have enabled us to hire a part-time Schools Program Director to work closely with our schools to define best practices, as well as a Research Associate among other things. If you would like to include Challenge Success in your year-end giving, you can do so online at our Donate page.
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Challenge Success is located at
Stanford University School of Education
485 Lasuen Mall, MC 3096
Stanford, California 94305-3096 |
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