Additional Past Speakers
Building Upstanders and Resilience: How-to's for Parents to Address Anti-Asian Sentiment
Featuring Dr. Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn in conversation with local KPIX journalist and broadcaster Betty Yu
Radical Self-Compassion
Featuring Dr. Kristin Neff
So You Want To Talk About Race?
A conversation with best-selling author, Ijeoma Oluo
The Brains Behind Thriving
The Nature and Nurture of Resilience: Strategies to Help our Children Thrive Featuring Dr. John Medina
Screens during COVID
Featuring Catherine Steiner Adair, PhD, and Michael Rich, MD
Moderated by Danielle Ramo-Larios, PhD
A Conversation with Valarie Kaur
A conversation between Valarie Kaur and Virginia Paik
Climate Change
Hope is Not a Strategy
Featuring Dr. Chip Fletcher
Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World
Featuring Dr. Madeline Levine
Managing Our Kids’ Stress
From Pre-School through High School
Featuring Dr. Lisa Damour
What Makes Humans Happy
Featuring Laurie Santos
Raising My Rainbow
Adventures in Raising A Gender Creative Child
Featuring Lori Duron
Reaching for Greatness
Empowering Your Kids to Harness Their Talents to Conquer the Challenges of the Modern World
Featuring Dr. Yong Zhao
Getting to Calm
Raising Healthy, Caring, and Successful Children in Our Angst-Ridden World Today
Featuring Laura Kastner, Ph.D.
A Conversation with Julie Lythcott-Haims on Her New Memoir—Real American
Featuring Julie Lythcott-Haims
Quiet:
Empowering Introverted Kids in a Noisy World
Featuring Susan Cain
Talking to Our Children About Race
A Matter of Life and Health
Featuring Dr. Howard Stevenson
Queen Bees and Masterminds
Navigating Cliques, Bullying, and Social Hierarchies
Featuring Rosalind Wiseman
Mathematical Mindsets
Unleashing Students’ Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages, and Innovative Teaching
Featuring Jo Boaler, Ph.D.
Age of Opportunity
Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence
Featuring Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.
Building a Better Blueprint
The Intersection of School, Social Media and Stress
Featuring Ana Homayoun
Color Blind or Color Inclusive?
Raising Culturally Competent Children in the 21st Century
Featuring Beverly Daniel Tatum
The Gift of Failure
Fostering Intrinsic Motivation and Resilience in Kids
Featuring Jessica Lahey
How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do
Featuring Claude M. Steele
The Opposite of Spoiled
Talking to Our Children About Money and Values
Featuring Ron Lieber
Fostering Success Raising Kids Who Are Grateful, Gritty, and Kind
Drawing on what psychology, sociology and neuroscience have shown about confidence, gratitude and grit — and using her own chaotic and often hilarious real-world adventures to demonstrate dos and don’ts in action — Christine Carter, PhD gives parents practical tips for creating families, schools and communities that nurture happy children including:
The relationship between grit, perfectionism and success
Tips on how to change your kids’ attitude into gratitude
The spirit of kindness — how to raise kind, compassionate and loving children.
A sociologist and happiness expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Christine Carter, Ph.D., is the author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Work and Home (January 2015) and Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents (2011). A sought-after keynote speaker, Dr. Carter also writes an award-winning blog, which is frequently syndicated on the HuffingtonPost, PsychologyToday.com, PositivelyPositive.com, Medium.com and several other websites.
Dr. Carter has been quoted or featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, Parenting and dozens of other publications. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, PBS, as well as NPR and BBC Radio.
Dr. Carter has helped thousands of people find more joy in their lives through her books, online classes, coaching and speaking engagements.
The Hybrid Mind: Balancing Nature and Technology
“The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need.”
— Richard Louv
In his latest book, The Nature Principle, bestselling author Richard Louv offers a new vision of the future in which our lives are as immersed in nature as they are in technology, and challenges us to rethink the way we live.
Louv explains how we can tap into the restorative powers of nature, and offers practical tips about how to bring nature back into our lives via “deep green exercise”. His work is supported by groundbreaking research (hospital patients with tree views need less pain medication than those with brick views) and compelling personal stories (bear-sniffing with his family in Alaska). He believes that by creating a “nature-rich” society, we can boost our mental acuity and creativity; promote health and wellness; build smarter and more sustainable businesses, communities, and economies; and ultimately strengthen human bonds.
Richard Louv is an acclaimed journalist and author of eight books, a frequent speaker, co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Children and Nature Network (www.childrenandnature.org) and past advisor to the Ford Foundation. His bestselling book Last Child in the Woods sparked an international movement to reconnect kids and nature. In it, he coined the now oft-used term, “Nature-Deficit Disorder.” He is a recipient of the National Audubon Society’s Audubon Medal, among many other honors.
SPEAK is pleased to host Richard Louv in partnership with the Presidio Trust, which stewards the Presidio in conjunction with the National Park Service. To learn more about Louv, visit www.richardlouv.com. For information about the Presidio Trust, visit www.presidio.gov.
Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People that Will Change the World
Play. Passion. Purpose.
According to Harvard educator and author Tony Wagner, these are the forces that drive young innovators. And innovation, he believes, is today’s most essential real-world skill.
In his new book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People that Will Change the World, Wagner explores ways in which we can nurture our children’s creativity and spark their imaginations. He helps us understand how to teach young people to learn from their failures and persevere, thus developing their capacities to become innovators. To illustrate his research, Wagner profiles compelling young American innovators—such as Kirk Phelps, who managed the development of Apple’s first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that lets Tanzanian farmers generate bicycle-powered energy.
Wagner also introduces us to forward-thinking schools and workplaces across the country. He explains how they are developing cultures of innovation based on collaboration, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation.
Tony Wagner is the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. His prior experience includes founding Harvard’s Change Leadership Group; twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal and university professor; and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility. Tony earned an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. He is the author of numerous articles and five books. His 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap, was an international best seller.
Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing
What is healthy competition for children?
Why can one child rise to the occasion, while another child crumbles under pressure?
How can children not just survive short-term stress, but learn to benefit from it?
What biological and socialized factors affect how girls and boys approach risk differently?
Why are the hormones of collaboration the same hormones of competition?
How can creativity be encouraged in a competitive environment?
In their new book, New York Times bestselling authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explore the science of competition through sports, business, politics, genetics, and neuroscience. But they also have a lot to say about education. Po Bronson will show us how to tip the odds of success in our favor—whether in school, on the playing field, or at home. Bronson reveals the hidden factors that fuel our determination, passion, and drive to compete. He argues that learning to turn competitiveness off is just as important as turning it on, and that every child can learn to compete—the competition just has to be the right kind. These days, too little of it is.
Bronson and Top Dog coauthor Ashley Merryman are also the authors of the New York Times bestseller NurtureShock. They have received the PEN USA Literary Award for Journalism and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Science Journalism, among other honors. Bronson is also the author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and What Should I Do With My Life? among other books.
Teaching Our Kids to Think and Act Ethically
“If we are to raise kids who can think and act ethically, we don’t begin with
the thinking or the acting. We begin with caring.”
—Barbara Coloroso
T-shirt slogans... bumper stickers... the Internet...
the evening news...
International best selling author Barbara Coloroso believes children’s ethical education can too easily come from any of the above, and that often the lesson is that the ends justify the means.
Drawing on her years as a teacher and consultant, Coloroso offers practical advice about how we can best nurture our children’s ethical lives, helping them learn to care deeply, share generously, and resist and respond effectively to social aggression.
Addressing parents of toddlers and adolescents alike, Coloroso touches on sibling rivalry, teenage rebellion, the media as educator, and the difference between punishment and discipline. She shares real life suggestions grounded in everyday situations at home and school, in social settings and the world at large. In doing so she urges us to teach our children how to think, not just what to think.
Coloroso is the author of Just Because It's Not Wrong Doesn't Make It Right: From Toddlers to Teens, Teaching Children to Think and Act Ethically, as well as kids are worth it! and The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: Breaking the Cycle of Violence.
An Evening with Wendy Mogel, Ph.D.
How do we raise optimistic, resilient, grateful children in a nervous world? How do we navigate the rough waters of the adolescent years with humor? Clinical psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Wendy Mogel explores these and other parenting questions with her trademark wit and warmth.
Building on her books The Blessing of a Skinned Knee and The Blessing of a B Minus, and drawing on new material, Mogel weaves together psychological research and Jewish teachings to offer practical parenting advice in a culture where entitlement and competition abound.
Mogel emphasizes parenting with empathy and guidance instead of micromanagement, and sheds light on when to step into our children's lives and when to step back. She encourages us to resist the urge to over schedule and overprotect our kids, and to promote self-restraint instead of self-centeredness. For parents of older kids, she explains why influence is more effective than control and helps us see beyond the drama of teenage crisis — all with the goal of raising happy kids.
Publisher's Weekly refers to Mogel as "impassioned, lyrical and eminently practical."
Mogel serves on the scientific advisory board of Stanford University School of Education's Challenge Success program, and on the boards of the Center for Early Education and the Counsel for Spiritual Education.
Dan Siegel on
The Whole-Brain Child
We all love our children dearly, but at times it seems they conspire to make our lives challenging!
Does your kindergartner refuse to get dressed on the busiest school mornings?
Does your 10-year-old sulk on the bench instead of playing on the field?
Is your young adolescent convinced that everything you do or say is wrong?
According to neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., this is just evidence that our kids’ developing minds are calling the shots. Siegel, author of The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, will speak about the impact of parenting on children’s brain development and the latest research about how young minds are wired and how they mature.
Dr. Siegel will share specific ideas to help parents turn outbursts and arguments into opportunities to foster our children's emotional intelligence—helping us to raise calmer, happier kids along the way. He’ll explain how to use discord to encourage empathy and greater social success, how to appeal to the left brain’s affinity for words and reasoning to calm tantrums and bodily tension, and how to use physical activity to shift children’s moods, among other strategies.
A clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, Dr. Siegel is also on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational center devoted to promoting insight, compassion, and empathy in individuals, families, institutions and communities.
For more information, visit www.drdansiegel.com.
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
What is the secret of talent, and how do we unlock it?
New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle believes the answer has less to do with good genes and more to do with practice—and the things that ignite it.
Coyle visited nine hotbeds of talent around the world—places that seem to breed tennis players, pop stars, and other extraordinary performers in sports, music, math, arts. And he found that each hotbed shared similar traits, as did the superstars themselves. According to Coyle, it comes down to coaching, motivation, and practice—the kind of deep practice that grows and maintains what he calls “skill circuits.”
A parent of four, Coyle will speak about how to maximize potential in ourselves and our children. He’ll explain how motivation works, how to spot when our kids are “ignited,” and will share some of the practice techniques he learned while researching his book.
The Talent Code is Coyle’s third book on performance. Lance Armstrong’s War, a New York Times bestseller, chronicles the year Coyle spent following Lance Armstrong when the cyclist won his record-breaking sixth consecutive Tour de France. Hardball: A Season in the Projects was Sporting News’ book of the year and became the Keanu Reeves movie of the same name. It describes a season of Little League in a tough Chicago housing project.
How Big IS a Hormone?... And Other Important Questions on the Minds of Kids
Are your children approaching puberty? Or already there? Do you feel ill-equipped to help them navigate the changes that lie ahead?
Though they may not say so, children actually want parents to be their primary resource for information about the "complete body and brain transformation called puberty!" Using candor and humor, speakers Rob Lehman and Julie Metzger will discuss the developmental stages of preteens, the questions and concerns that are on their minds, and strategies for the trusted adults who live and work alongside them. In doing so, Julie and Rob will help parents set the stage for open communication about the physical, social and emotional changes that accompany adolescence. This discussion is highly recommended for parents of children ages 8–16.
Julie Metzger and Robert Lehman have decades of experience with the adolescent and pre-adolescent mindset. They created and now teach the popular “Growing Up” program at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the “Heart to Heart” program out of Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
Robert Lehman, MD, has devoted his professional career to adolescent health care. As a physician, his practice has focused on teenagers in many different clinical situations, including schools, homeless clinics and public health facilities. He is also a passionate advocate for youth on the local and national level and has been on the University of Washington faculty since 1989. In 1990, he began working with Julie Metzger on the "Growing Up" series.
Julie Metzger, R.N. and M.N., is a pediatric nurse, writer and educator. She developed her popular "Heart to Heart, For Girls Only" program in 1989, and has taught the class to thousands of mother- daughter teams in Seattle, Palo Alto and the Puget Sound region. She is a co-designer and instructor of several other classes aimed at fostering child-parent communication in adolescence.
For more information about Rob Lehman and Julie Metzger and their new book, visit www.greatconversations.com.
Unconditional Parenting: Beyond Bribes & Threats
What can we do to help children grow into good people? Author Alfie Kohn suggests that merely to ask that question is to understand the limits of conventional approaches to parenting, which are focused more on getting kids to do whatever they’re told. He stresses that controlling techniques such as rewards (including positive reinforcement) and punishments (including time-outs) prove counterproductive over the long haul. What’s more, he believes they lead children to conclude that they’re loved only when they please us or impress us. Kohn will share ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them, and for making sure that they know our care for them is unconditional.
Alfie Kohn is the author of 12 books on education, parenting, and human behavior, including Punished by Rewards, The Schools Our Children Deserve, Unconditional Parenting, The Homework Myth, and Feel-Bad Education (due out this spring). He has written for most of the leading education periodicals and has appeared on Oprah. Time magazine described him as "perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades (and) test scores."
For more information, visit www.alfiekohn.org.
Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness
Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D. is the New York Times bestselling author of Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, as well as the recent The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life.
Discussing the latest scientific research from his field of positive psychology—"the scientific study of optimal human functioning"—Tal Ben-Shahar provides practical ideas for better living by bringing together "the rigor of academia and the accessibility of self-help."* He shares tools that can actually make us happier, including simplifying our lives, expressing gratitude, and realizing that happiness lies at the intersection of pleasure and meaning.
Tal Ben-Shahar is on the faculty of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, where he co-founded the Institute for Positive Psychology in Education. An author and lecturer, his Harvard course on happiness was one of the most popular in the university’s recent history. As a consultant to executives in multi-national corporations, he speaks on topics such as happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership. Dr. Ben-Shahar holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.
Smart Parenting in an Online World
Moderated by Susannah Baldwin
Anne Zehren, President of CommonSense Media, B.J. Fogg, Stanford Professor and author of The Psychology of Facebook, and Matt Levinson, Assistant Head of School and Head of the Middle School at Nueva School, participate in a panel discussion on parenting in the digital age.
This community forum will speak to the unique challenges faced by parents trying to manage and understand the revolution in communication and information technology that is part of their children's lives. It is an extraordinary opportunity for parents to gain insight into the educational, social and psychological implications of growing up as a digital native.
Raising Resilient Children & Teens
Dr. Ken Ginsburg, a nationally recognized pediatrician in Adolescent Medicine at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, aims to start a national dialogue among parents and children of all ages to redefine perceptions of success, and evaluate the significant physical and emotional damage that stress and everyday pressure can have on development.
He creates strategies to raise resilient children who are capable of dealing with life's difficulties and learn from personal defeat. Ginsburg is the author of A Parent’s Guide to Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Your Child Roots and Wings and Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond, with Marilee Jones.
When Learning Comes Naturally
The Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Hope to Action: Women for a Greener Planet, and the California Academy of Sciences cordially invite you to an evening devoted to exploring the importance of environmental education and connections to nature for school-age children, including the West Coast premiere of the film, When Learning Comes Naturally.
The fourth program in The Learning Child Series, When Learning Comes Naturally was produced for public television by Jonathan Diamond Associates in association with the Sarah Lawrence College Child Development Institute. The film showcases the efforts of four schools and a community institution as they introduce children to the natural world and encourage them -- through play, classroom activities, exploration and their own creative work -- to make a lasting connection to the environment.
Like its companions, this document supports parents and educators in engaging children to become motivated and thoughtful lifelong learners. Screening of this 28-minute film will be followed by a panel discussion with:
Jill Bible, Curriculum Developer, Teacher Institute on Science and Sustainability, California Academy of Sciences
Jennifer Caldwell, Founder and President, Hope to Action
Helena Carmena, Manager of Teacher Services, California Academy of Sciences
Jonathan Diamond, Executive Producer, When Learning Comes Naturally
Margery Franklin, Psychology Faculty Emerita and Former Director of the Child Development Institute, Sarah Lawrence College
Steve Morris, Head of School, The San Francisco School
Suzy Schwimmer, Lead Teacher, Sarah Lawrence College Early Childhood Center
Carolie Sly, Education Program Director, Center for Ecoliteracy
Moderated by Rachel Grob, Director of the Child Development Institute, Sarah Lawrence College. This event is designed for educators, parents and others with an interest in environmental education, school greening, the relationship between children and nature, and sustainable communities.
Nurture the Nature of Children
Michael Gurian, author of the New York Times bestseller Nurture the Nature, and co-founder of the Gurian Institute, talks about the latest brain research in child and adolescent development and the tools parents need to discover their child’s core nature.
Gurian argues that children are not blank slates to be shaped as we wish, but rather that each child has a unique temperament—with specific needs, strengths, vulnerabilities, and learning styles—that cannot be adequately supported with a one-size-fits all approach.
A researcher of brain science and gender differences, Gurian sees a disturbing trend in parents’ increasing willingness to disregard their own instincts, and allowing instead media and society-driven fads to dictate the way they raise their children. Using the latest research in brain science in child and adolescent development, he provides parents with the tools they need to uncover and nurture their child’s core nature—who their child really is—so each child can flourish and thrive.
Michael Gurian is an educator, therapist, corporate consultant, and the bestselling author of twenty-five books published in twenty one languages including The Wonder of Boys, Boys and Girls Learn Differently!, The Wonder of Girls, The Minds of Boys, and Nurture the Nature. He has pioneered efforts to bring neuro-biology and brain research into homes, workplaces, schools and public policy.
For Successful Kids:
Redefining Goals
Today we live in a high-pressure, high-stakes environment that is pre-occupied with the easily observable measures of success, such as grades, trophies, and prestigious school admissions. While often romanticized as a simple and carefree time, childhood and adolescence are, in fact, a time of intensive growth and development and this narrow vision of success often impedes healthy maturation.
As a result, we see an unacceptably high level of impairment among our children, even among those seen as “successful.” Our distinguished panel will argue that success is complex, and that character, well-being, emotional intelligence, authenticity, and accomplishment are all necessary components of success. They will present the research data and outline how parents can reassess their view of success and make choices that support their children’s healthy development.
Featured Speakers:
Jim Lobdell, M.A., is an educational consultant and co-founded Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, widely regarded as the nation’s most innovative publisher of K-12 social studies curriculum. He authored several teaching methodology books, including Bring Learning Alive! Engaging All Learners in the Diverse Classroom and advised school districts nationwide on teacher-training and site-based reform.
Madeline Levine, Ph.D., is a psychologist with over 25 years of experience and is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Materialistic and Unhappy Kids, and two books on child development and the media, Viewing Violence and See No Evil. Dr. Levine is regularly featured on national media, including such programs as The Early Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and National Public Radio.
Denise Clark Pope, Ph.D., has taught for the past eight years at the Stanford University School of Education. She directs the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project, a research and intervention effort to help K-12 schools counter the causes of academic stress. She lectures nationally and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN and other national media. Her book, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students received the Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal.
Slipping Behind, a short film by Vicki Abeles and Julie McDonald, is an in-depth profile of American children and the challenges they face. Slipping Behind asks the question, "Are we preparing our children to lead meaningful, productive lives?" The film features interviews with experts in education, economics history, public health and psychology and offers an intimate look at real families.