Lessons from high school

“In a few years you’re going to college,” my ninth-grade English teacher cautioned us. “And no one is going to care about what you did in high school.”  Similar sentiments have echoed around me for years — from teachers, parents and, just this April, students at Yale. “Next year, nothing from high school will matter anymore.”…

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Making A Splash

(Note: This is a talk given at an academic awards ceremony to students, parents and teachers.) In the ‘60s during the flowering of the hippie generation, young people didn’t trust anyone over 30. We didn’t like adults, didn’t want to become one. I recall vividly vowing that I would be dead before I turned 30,…

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Middle school suicide

USA Today Network has published an important, troubling article, “America sees alarming spike in middle school suicide rate.” “The suicide rate among 10- to 14-year-olds doubled between 2007 and 2014, for the first time surpassing the death rate in that age group from car crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014…

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Motivation

It was cold, a November evening, and I was the administrator on duty, so I was walking around the campus shortly after dinner on my way to the athletic center to lock the building. The last coach to leave after practice was supposed to lock up but never did. My mood was not good. The…

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Developing Social Competence in Children

  Changes in the way families are organized and function have resulted in less, and possibly lower quality, adult-child closeness. At the same time, children have been bombarded with increasing amounts of violence in the media. This brief presents an overview of effective strategies for use with children in elementary school to improve their growth.…

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