The Common Ground Speaker Series
Stanbridge Academy is proud to be associated with the Common Ground Speaker Series. Each school year, Common Ground presents distinguished speakers in education, parenting, and health at venues across the San Francisco Peninsula. Parents, faculty, and staff of member schools attend Common Ground events free of charge. Guests not affiliated with a member school may attend for a $20 fee at the door. Click below for details on upcoming presentations, and click here for a complete listing of this season's speakers.
Next speaker: Paul Tough
Thursday, October 3, 2019
7:00 p.m. Menlo School 50 Valparaiso Ave. Atherton |
"The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us"
Paul Tough (in conversation with Denise Pope) Does college work? Does it provide real opportunity for young people who want to improve themselves and their prospects? Or is it simply a rigged game designed to protect elites with power and wealth and exclude everyone else? For many of us, our doubts and resentments about higher education live side by side with an appreciation, even a yearning, for the life-changing personal transformation that a college education can provide. Paul Tough’s new groundbreaking book, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us will shake you up, inspire and enrage you, and make you think differently about who we are as a country – and whether the American dream of opportunity and mobility is still a worthy one. Paul Tough is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, where he has written extensively about education, parenting, poverty, and politics. His writing has also appeared in the The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and GQ and on the op-ed page of The New York Times. He has worked as an editor at The New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program “This American Life.” In addition to The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us, Tough is the author of Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why. His previous book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, was translated into 27 languages and spent more than a year on The New York Times hardcover and paperback best-seller lists. His first book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, was published in 2008. Tough lives with his wife and two sons in Montauk, New York. Denise Pope, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and the founder of Challenge Success. She is the co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids and Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, integrity and engagement. |
Coming soon: Lynn Lyons
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
9:30 a.m. St. Andrew’s Episcopal School 13601 Saratoga Avenue Saratoga Tuesday, October 15, 2019
7:00 p.m. St. Matthew’s Episcopal Day School 16 Baldwin Avenue San Mateo |
Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: Interrupting the Worry Cycle
Lynn Lyons Why are our children so anxious and getting more so? Anxiety, not depression, is the leading mental health issue among American youth, and clinicians and research suggest it is growing. Based on data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, researchers found a 20 percent increase in diagnoses of anxiety in school-age children between 2007 and 2012. Conversely, the rate of depression over the same time period ticked up just 0.2 percent. Anxiety in many children has a generational link, with patterns of worry and anxiety being passed from parents to children. But what parents and other well-meaning adults often do in an effort to help anxious children actually serves to strengthen these patterns. Lyons addresses these cycles head on, and equips families with an alternative approach that focuses on active engagement over avoidant behavior. Lynn Lyons is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist who lives in Concord, New Hampshire. She has been in private practice for 28 years, where she specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders in adults and children. Lyons travels globally as a speaker and trainer on the subject of anxiety, its role in families, and the need for a preventative approach at home and in schools. She has a special interest in breaking the generational cycle of worry in families, and is the coauthor of two books on anxiety: Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous & Independent Children, and a companion book for kids, Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids. Lyons received a BA in English from Williams College, and a Masters in Social Work from Boston University. |
Visit the Common Ground Speaker Series website for a complete list of this season's speakers, as well as details on previous Common Ground speakers, member schools, videos, and more.
