Parent University Offers A Morning of Free Workshops on Saturday
On Saturday, November 23rd between 8am and noon, all Melrose caregivers and community members are invited to Parent University, a free event sponsored by the Melrose Education Foundation. This popular event is now in its 9th year, with some workshops returning from previous years, and others new this year.
The event will feature a welcome address from Melrose Public Schools (MPS) Superintendent Adam Deleidi and two sessions where attendees can choose from a list of 19 workshops. In between the two workshop sessions, there will be a panel discussion that everyone will attend. While participants can register the morning of, it is recommended that attendees register ahead of time, since some workshops might fill up, or might not run if there are too few people signed up.
The Melrose Education Foundation, which was founded in 2013, raises money from the community to support grants for MPS teachers who want to try something new or innovative in their classrooms. Mary Caddle, the Melrose Education Foundation’s president, explained that the foundation’s goal is “to bring in interesting and exciting new things; to make our teachers feel supported and engaged, and allow them to try something new that might work better.”
The Melrose Education Foundation also runs Parent University, with the goal of giving caregivers the tools they need to be effective partners in their children’s education.
Caddle pointed out that, while some of the information shared at Parent University might be available online in articles or webinars, the community feeling of being together in a shared space is something that can’t be replicated online. “It’s that boost you get from attending a conference,” she said, “that collaborative feeling. So many of us are dealing with the same issues, it helps to see that we’re all in this together.”
Caddle noted that while Parent University has experimented with a number of different formats since it began, this year’s format - two workshops, with a panel on a subject most attendees are likely to be interested in sandwiched between them - seems to be the most effective way to organize it.
This year’s panel discussion topic will be Fostering Resilience. Lisa Lewis, a Melrose Education Foundation board member, explained that the panel topic is selected based on a combination of where the Melrose Education Foundation is able to pull in “really strong experts, and where we are seeing a lot of discussion among parents and in the media.” Resilience, Lewis noted, was a “hot topic” prior to the pandemic, and there is now a resurgence of articles and discussion again focused on the idea of building resilience.
The experts on this year’s panel will be MPS school psychologist Jaime Wicklund; Jillian Russo, who is a psychologist and researcher at Maclean Hospital; and Sheilah Gauch, the principal and clinical director at Dearborn Academy, which is a private school in Newton that serves students with a variety of special needs. The panel will aim to give attendees an overview of what resilience looks like in both children and caregivers, and offer concrete strategies for building resilience.
This year’s workshops offer something for everyone, from parents of young children through those who have high schoolers applying to college.
One perennial favorite workshop that returns this year is The Nurtured Heart Approach, led by Sam Healy, LICSW, which gives caregivers strategies to promote positive behaviors and self-regulation in children of all ages. “I’ve gone to that one more than once,” noted Caddle, “because I needed different approaches for each of my kids.”
Restorative Practices is another workshop that has appeared at Parent University several times in the past. This year, the workshop will be broken up into two smaller sessions, for younger and older children. Crabby Kids, which has been popular in the past, is also returning this year, as are workshops on applying to and paying for college.
In addition to past favorites, there are a number of workshops that are new this year. Parents of young children might be especially interested in the Is Your Kid Ready for K? workshop, which will be run by Milissa Churchill, the principal of Horace Mann Elementary, and Shamus Brady, the assistant principal of Winthrop Elementary and is intended to help parents understand what is expected of current kindergarten students.
The Science of Reading is also aimed at parents of young and elementary-aged readers, and will be run by Tiffany Hogan, PhD, the director of the SAiL Literacy Lab at MGH, and Dorie Withey, who is an ELA Elementary Program Director with the Boston Public Schools and a Melrose School Committee member. Lewis noted that both Hogan and Withey have been working on the Melrose Public Schools literacy task force and they “can speak to both what’s out there in the world and what’s happening in our schools specifically.”
Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School (MVMMS) Principal Josh Murphy will also be running two workshops, one called Is it Smart to Get your Kid a Smartphone? and another focused on the Olweus anti-bullying program that has recently been introduced at MVMMS. That workshop, said Lewis, “will be a good opportunity to learn about what is being worked on in our district and get real answers from the source.”
Also new is a workshop on teen gambling: Lewis noted that many parents may not be aware of the connection between video games and gambling, or that sports betting can be “serious” gambling for some. This workshop, run by two counselors, is intended to help parents recognize the signs of problem gambling in teens and learn how to talk about it with their kids.
These are just some of the 19 workshops that will be available on Saturday. You can register for Parent University on the Melrose Education Foundation's website.
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