December 2011 Newsletter

The 8th annual Fall Conference at Stanford drew record crowds, both to the Friday night public session and for our schools program on Saturday. Ken Ginsburg spoke to the crowd Friday night about what it means to be successful and why students don’t need to sacrifice their happiness to achieve lofty goals. We screened a new CS film in which we heard from 10 students on things that have worked at their schools to make life less stressful and more engaging. Denise, Madeline and Ken walked through three interactive parenting scenarios with help from the crowd that texted in their responses. The different responses from educators, students, and parents were recorded in real time and led to a rich discussion of the issues of homework, tutoring, motivating your teen, and college admissions. We look forward to working with our 10 new teams and to welcoming our schools back on April 21, 2012 for our spring conference. If you were unable to attend the conference, you can see what you missed - DVD’s of the conference are available for purchase at www.challengesuccess.org.

After months of development and in response to demand for high quality, practical parent education offerings, we will launch our online parent education course on December 1st. The course, based on our 6-week live course, is designed for parents of elementary and middle school-aged children and takes about 10 hours to complete.  This is a hands-on, interactive course designed to help parents find a healthy balance between achievement and physical and emotional well-being for their children.

You can register for the course on-line. If you would rather attend class in person, please check our website for details on upcoming courses in Kentfield, Lafayette, and back at Stanford next spring. And stay tuned for more parent education online offerings including Denise and Madeline’s answers to frequently asked parenting questions. 

Greater Emphasis on Research and Publications

Research is at the center of what we do at Challenge Success, and we have been busy analyzing and compiling data for presentation and publication. We will be submitting research on teacher care, homework, and engagement with learning and motivation/academic stress over the next several months. In addition, we have revised our in-depth student survey tool to make it easier for schools to implement while providing more school-specific data.

We have also embarked on an ambitious three-year self assessment to delve more deeply into what works at our member schools to reduce stress and increase engagement. While we regularly collect data on school change and best practices, this is the first time we have developed a comprehensive plan to collect such extensive data in an attempt to develop a richer set of best practices.

Finally, we recently updated the Do You Know section of our website, with more information on the latest research on a wide variety of topics so check it out on-line.