We know that high school can be a roller coaster ride with many highs and lows. This page is dedicated to helping students who are seeking support in many personal areas. We encourage students to reach out if they are in trouble, feeling down, or have concerns about someone they care about. As counselors, we are here to help in any way we can, so please utilize the resources on this site and come visit the counseling center if you need help.
Race to Nowhere
Race to Nowhere is a documentary film examining the pressures faced by youth, teachers and parents in our achievement obsessed education system and culture.
Director Vicki Abeles turns the personal political, igniting a national conversation in her new documentary about the pressures faced by American schoolchildren and their teachers in our achievement obsessed public and private education system and culture. Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people across the country who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic in our schools: cheating has become commonplace, students have become disengaged, stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, and young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.
Race to Nowhere is a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.
Please consider watching this important documentary and have these conversations with your children. Their future is at stake and it's not too late to turn it around. Take a quick look at these daunting statistics.
A Place for Parents: Hot Topics
Love Them, Don't Indulge Them, and Know the Difference
We are surrounded by gadgets and electronics, obsessed with the quickest, easiest, fastest way to gain information. Parents often find themselves in the predicament of having too much on their plate and not enough time to spend with their kids. To ease their guilt, they often overindulge, giving children too many material things and too much freedom, placing them in countless activities to keep them busy because parents are too busy. How do we escape this evolving world? Well, we can't. It is a part of our changing culture and instead of avoiding it, educators and parents must work together in making sure our kids are not overindulged. Unfortunately, we are often confused between the difference of loving our children and overindulging our children. Find out what can happen when kids are overindulged:
Over-Dependency: Overindulged children usually become excessively dependent on their parents and others.
Anger and Resentment: Anger becomes associated with children's over-dependence on parents. For some, this may lead to opposition and conduct disorder.
Loss of Interdependency: Children may develop the belief that it is all about them while showing little to no concern for others.
Loss of Self-Reliance: Many overindulged children do not gradually learn the skills necessary to eventually stand on their own two feet.
Inflated Self-Esteem: Overindulgent children often hear very positive comments about themselves from their parents. Their parents often do not give constructive criticism about real flaws. This can result in their struggle to manage constructive criticism from other well-intended adults.
Emotional Distance: Overindulged children tend to create emotional distance with parents more severely than normal.
Loss of Age Appropriate Skills: Since everything is corrected for them and done for them, overindulged children do not learn basic age appropriate skills.
Conditional Love: Overindulgent parents create children who engage in conditional love - "I'll love you if you give me what I want. I won't if you don't."
Fogarty Ed.D, J. and Cross Country Education, Inc. (2005). Overindulged Children and Conduct Disorder: Treating Overindulgent Families. Brentwood, TN: Cross Country Education
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