Students of all ages are reporting increased levels of stress due to the pressures of academic performance. On Thursday, May 12, the New Jersey School Boards Association will host, “The Pressure of Perfection,” an informative half-day session at the Union County College-Cranford campus (Roy Smith Theatre), on ways schools and students can cope with this pressure.
NJSBA invites school board members, administrators, educators, and parents to this program. Participants will have an opportunity to share views on the impact that the pressure for perfection is having on the students in their schools. The program is being offered as part of NJSBA’s new Equity in Excellence lecture series. More programs in the series will be announced later in 2016.
Keynote Speaker Dr. Maurice Elias of Rutgers University, the keynote speaker, is a nationally-recognized expert in community and preventive psychology and school intervention. He serves as director of clinical training in the university’s psychology department; as director of the Rutgers Social and Emotional Learning Laboratory, and director of the Collaborative, Rutgers Center for Community-Based Research, Service, and Public Scholarship. For five years, he directed New Jersey’s Developing Safe and Civil Schools Initiative, working with 250 schools statewide. Dr. Elias will discuss the causes of stress and the practices that staff and parents can use to help children navigate this difficult time in their lives.
Other speakers will include Lee McDonald, director of guidance for the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district, who will discuss the district’s proactive and comprehensive practices to help all students and staff meet today’s challenges in a healthy way. In addition, members of the NJSBA Health and Wellness Task Force will present strategies to address the whole child, including stress reduction, and the implementation of mindfulness techniques.
The program will run from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., with registration starting at 8:30 a.m. It will offer two credits through the NJSBA Board Member Academy.
For further information, including registration procedures, click here.