Wednesday Live - Denise Pope from Stanford Challenges the Current School Success Model

Join me Wednesday, October 24th, for a one-hour live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with Stanford's Denise Pope, co-founder of the Challenge Success program, a research-based organization that develops "refreshingly practical curriculum, conferences and other programs for parents, schools, and kids looking for a healthier and more effective path to success." From the site:

"At Challenge Success, we believe that our society has become too focused on grades, test scores and performance, leaving little time and energy for our kids to become resilient, successful, meaningful contributors for the 21st century...

"We believe that children come with a wide variety of interests, skills, capacities and talents. Children need love, support, limits and a safe environment to develop their full potential. This process of growing up is slow, deliberate and often unpredictable, and therefore requires that children have the time and energy needed to mature into resilient, caring and engaged adults. Challenge Success recognizes that our current fast-paced, high-pressure culture works against everything we know about healthy child development. 

"At Challenge Success we believe that the over emphasis on grades, test scores and rote answers has stressed out some students and marginalized many more. We all want our children to do well in school, and certainly there is content that must be mastered, but our singular focus has resulted in a lack of attention to other components of a successful life - the ability to be independent, adaptable, ethical, and motivated critical thinkers."

A Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education, for the past thirteen years Denise has specialized in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She founded and served as director of Stressed-Out Students (SOS), the predecessor to Challenge Success. She lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. Her book Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (and which she discussed last year on FutureofEducation.com) was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal. Dr. Pope is a 3 time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award. She has been featured on CNN, World News Tonight, the Today Show, NPR, and several other television and radio programs. Before Stanford, Dr. Pope taught high school English in Fremont, California and college composition at Santa Clara University.

Date: Wednesday, October 24th, 2012
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-10-24.1533.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/denisepopecs.mp3.
Mightybell Space: Resources, videos, links, and conversation about the interview can be found HERE.

From the website:

Responding to an increase in academic and emotional problems among kids in the United States, psychologists, educators, physicians, and public health and policy experts in child and adolescent well-being convened at Stanford University in July 2007 to envision a coordinated approach to helping schools, parents and families develop alternative success models to align with research on healthy child development.

In response to this meeting, Madeline Levine, Ph.D., Jim Lobdell, M.A., and Denise Pope, Ph.D. founded Challenge Success, an expansion of the highly successful SOS (Stressed-Out Students) Project at Stanford University. Utilizing the resources of a prominent advisory board of interdisciplinary experts, the co-founders created a research-based organization that develops refreshingly practical curriculum, conferences and other programs for parents, schools, and kids looking for a healthier and more effective path to success in the 21st century. Challenge Success has become a trusted “voice of reason” for parents and educators and has received significant media attention and tremendous public and private support.

"At Challenge Success, we work every day to provide schools and families with the information and strategies they need to create a more balanced and academically fulfilling life for their kids.  We work with teams of educators, parents and students at schools to identify problems and implement best practices for school policies, curriculum, assessment, and a healthy school climate.  We provide support to parents by giving them the tools to help their children regain their balance, strengthen their sense of self, increase their motivation and critical thinking skills, and learn how to deal effectively with the inevitable challenges of life. And we conduct, collect and synthesize research, so that the public can make informed decisions about educating children."