Please join the Newton Public Schools for an informative community forum with guest speaker Phyllis Fagell. Ms. Fagell is a licensed clinical professional counselor, certified professional school counselor, journalist, and author of the best-selling book “Middle School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond—and How Parents Can Help.” She is also a Ward, Day and North grad! This will be a terrific night filled with important information and dialogue, including how families can help their students navigate through the pandemic. You can take a sneak peek at her work on her website.
Here is the Zoom link for this virtual forum:
https://newton-k12-ma-us.zoom.us/j/88476468856
Meeting ID: 884 7646 8856
Passcode: 090547
Please RSVP to the forum using this form. You can login without an RSVP, but it is helpful for us to have a general sense of attendance to plan accordingly. Here is the RSVP form:
More details on the forum can be found on the NPS website here: https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/Page/3988 See below for a description of the presentation.
Building Middle Schoolers’ Resilience and Confidence
Through stories, research and her professional experience, Phyllis will offer parents a menu of practical strategies that will help tweens and teens acquire the key skills they need to manage the social complexity, academic challenges and intense emotions that characterize this critical phase. The added challenges inherent in raising our children through a pandemic, the influence of social media, and the increase in mental health issues will also be covered.
Phyllis is the school counselor at Sheridan School in Washington, DC, a therapist who works with kids and families in private practice, and an author and journalist. She’s the author of “Middle School Matters” and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. She also writes for Psychology Today, CNN, Working Mother, U.S. News & World Report and Your Teen, and her ideas have been shared in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and NPR. Phyllis lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and three children. She grew up in Newton and attended Ward Elementary School, Frank A. Day Junior High and Newton North High School.