Parents Scene
3 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…
Read More“No Excuse, Sir”
This is an address presented to high school students and their parents and teachers. Each time I conduct one of these awards ceremonies, I spend some time thinking about what it is that separates those who are successful students from those who are not. What characteristics do the successful possess? Though it will probably…
Read MoreThe Hollowdays
“We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw.” – T.S. Eliot (“The Hollow Men,” 1925) It is already Christmas at Starbucks. They may call it the “holidays,” of course, just one more way of extracting all the caffeine (i.e., authenticity) and profundity…
Read MorePathologizing men is unproductive. We should invest in better men-focused spaces.
In her Oct. 22 op-ed, Julianna Lee ’25 argued that male-only spaces could better Princeton’s campus by building “encouragement, empowerment, and friendship for men.” Columnist Ava Johnson ’27 responded on Nov. 4, contending that male-only spaces fail to address men’s problems and “[run] the risk of breeding misogyny and bullying.” These opinions come at a time when…
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