Parents Scene
Princeton’s role in combating the drug crisis must start on campus
Drug addiction is a public health crisis in the United States. Total overdose deaths have increased in the United States over the last two decades across all demographic groups, with about 17 percent of Americans battling a substance use disorder in the past year. These alarming statistics show just how large of a problem drug dependency has become, but there’s…
Read MoreGrowing Tomorrow’s Leaders Today: A Conversation with Joyce Cooper-Kahn
Introduction: Why Executive Functioning Matters When I interviewed Joyce Cooper-Kahn about the new edition of her book, “Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents’ Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning,” she modestly credited many of her insights as a child psychologist to what she’d learned from working with her clients. One example she offered was particularly…
Read MoreEducation and the brain: On grace and development
For Coach Tommy Jones January is cold for baseball, but at this preseason practice, the team sitting, backs against the left field fence in front of our home dugout, I was as warm and shamefaced as I could be. Coach Tommy Jones, as he did before every practice, told us a story about life…
Read More3 Helpful Scripts for Teachers with Anxious, Perfectionist Students
After “the craziest admissions season ever” last year, and as we head into what will surely be another highly competitive cycle, high school students are understandably increasingly anxious about their academics. I’ve witnessed this firsthand during my years teaching high school and middle school—seeing students vibrating from the stress and barely holding it together,…
Read MoreThis is an article about suicide
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] I suppose that is a trigger warning, yet I don’t like the term…
Read MorePrinceton, it’s time to implement media literacy training
“Seek the truth by asking your own questions and coming to your own conclusions.” Under the gothic arches of the University Chapel in his 2011 Baccalaureate speech, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defined a struggle that has plagued our generation: the exponential rise of online disinformation, which has consistently challenged democracies and hindered…
Read MoreCuriosity Did Not Kill the Cat
“Curiosity killed the cat.” Among the world’s most foolish aphorisms, this one stands out. It is quite likely that the lack of curiosity is more likely a fatal condition for cats . . . and humans. Yet another lousy OpEd on education graced – or disgraced – the pages of the New York Times…
Read MoreWhat to do when the world is crumbling
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] I used to love reading dystopian novels in middle school. The Hunger Games, Divergent,…
Read MoreHealth & Well-Being: Reframing the Anxiety Conversation
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] Like many schools across the country, University School of Milwaukee (WI) has seen…
Read MoreReality(?) TV
I have a guilty pleasure. I watch reality television. I know, I know…and the only thing I can say in my defense is that until recently, I almost exclusively limited myself to cooking shows with a strong preference for ones where the contestants were kind to one another (think early seasons of The Great…
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