Stressed Out Students Conference and Lecture

Stanford University's School of Education and the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health will sponsor a conference May 7th and 8th entitled, "SOS-Stressed Out Students: Helping to Improve Health, School Engagement, and Academic Integrity." This conference is designed to address the growing concern that adolescents are often compromising their mental and physical health, personal values, and commitment to learning as they try to contend with the pressure for high achievement in U.S. schools.

Friday evening May 7th will include a lecture that is free and open to the public, 7:30 - 9:30 p.m., at Cubberley Auditorium in the Stanford University School of Education Building. The panel speakers will include Richard Simon, principal of The Wheatley School in New York, a public school that has implemented creative strategies to address academic stress; students from middle school, high school and college levels; and Dr. Denise Clark Pope, author of Doing school: How we are creating a generation of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students.

Saturday May 8th will include a full-day conference for a small number of middle school and high school teams from San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. More information is available at http://SOSconference.stanford.edu.

School teams of five to seven stakeholders (including the principal and at least one teacher, parent, and student) were invited to submit an application to participate in the Saturday conference. Selected teams will attend a Friday night reception from 6:30pm to 7:30pm before the public plenary as well as the Saturday workshop sessions designed for schools to develop strategies to counter academic stress. Additionally, each team will receive a trained "coach" who will offer guidance to the school for six months following the conference as the team begins to implement its strategies. This six-month period will culminate in a re-convening of conference teams to assess the strategies that have been implemented and to discuss plans for the future.  

Please visit our website: http://SOSconference.stanford.edu for more details.

For more information about the conference, please contact Denise Clark Pope, PhD, Stanford University School of Education (dclark@stanford.edu), or Mollie Galloway, PhD, Stanford Center on Adolescence (mollieg@stanford.edu).