Tuesday, November 19, 2024  -  7:30 pm - 8:30 pm 

Join award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Wallace as she explores the roots of toxic achievement pressure and gives a practical framework for how parents, educators, and communities can fight back. This session is for caregivers and parents of school-aged children—primarily adolescents and teens—educators, school counselors, and school administrators.

Presenter: Jennifer Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestselling book, Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It. She contributes to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and appears frequently on television to discuss her articles and relevant topics. Wallace is a BCG BrightHouse Luminary and consultant with The LEGO Group. She began her journalism career at CBS 60 Minutes and is a journalism fellow at The Center for Parent and Teen Communication at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

 

Registration link coming soon.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025  -  7:30 pm - 8:30 pm 

Tweens and teens need to feel a sense of belonging in order to take social and academic risks, manage social setbacks, cope with intense emotions, and make smart choices online and offline. Fagell will share practical ways to boost your child’s social skills, scaffold risk-taking at an age when they fear embarrassment, and help them find their place in the pack. While the strategies apply to all kids, she will concentrate most on kids in grades 3–10.

Presenter: Phyllis L. Fagell is a licensed mental health therapist at Chrysalis Group, Inc. and certified school counselor at Landon School. She is the author of Middle School Matters, The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond – and How Parents Can Help, and Middle School Superpowers, Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times. Fagell also is a contributor to The Washington Post, CNN, U.S. News & World Report, and her ideas have been shared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, and NPR.

Registration link coming soon.

Register Here

Tuesday, March 11, 2025  -  7:30 pm - 8:30 pm 

Parents are critically important in the lives of adolescents. The security of your love allows young people to launch successfully into an uncertain future. Your high expectations hold them accountable, keep them safe, and shape them to become their best selves. The best way to protect your child is to prepare them to manage life’s complexities while establishing clear boundaries. Open communication about emotional wellness and distress positions you to support them to be emotionally intelligent and navigate life’s curveballs. Modeling self-care and healthy stress management strategies teaches them to get through tough times. Listen to remind yourself how much you matter. If you have younger children, now is the time to invest in building wise, strong children who will thrive through adolescence and beyond. 

Presenter: Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, is a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the founding director of The Center for Parent and Teen Communication at CHOP. His mission is to prepare adults to be the kind of people that adolescents need and deserve in their lives. He has more than 150 publications, including research and clinical practice articles, books, and chapters. His books include Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings, Congrats-You’re Having a Teen!: Strengthen Your Family, and Raise a Good Person. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The CBS Morning Show, FOX and Friends, and ABC, NBC, and CBS Nightly News.

Registration link coming soon.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025  -  7:30 pm - 8:30 pm 

For most parents, planning a summer for their children is a complex mix of their own work demands, requests to visit extended family, the ages, temperaments and interests of their children, pressure on children from sports coaches, and the goals parents have for summer family time. For children, summer is a time to grow and develop in new ways. Thompson will address the conflicting pressures on summer planning, while suggesting that goals for summer should include relief from the stress and anxiety of school, opportunities to make new friends in a different context, and chances to take (supervised) risks and master new skills.

Presenter: Michael Thompson, PhD is a clinical psychologist, author, and school consultant. He has worked in schools for 50 years, starting out as a middle school teacher and later training as a counselor and psychologist. Now the supervising psychologist for the Belmont Hill School (MA), he has worked with more than 700 schools in the US and internationally. Thompson is the author or co-author of nine books. His newest book Hopes and Fears: Working with Today’s Independent School Parents, co-written with Rob Evans, was published by the National Association of Independent Schools in February 2021 and the second edition was released in 2024.

Registration link coming soon.

 

On Wednesday, December 6^th at 6PM, we will host a virtual parent version of a recent student seminar, The Maternal Mortality Crisis – Fighting Systemic Barriers in Healthcare.  Did you realize that although the United States spends the most money of any country in the world on healthcare, we have the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized country. That’s right, pregnant women in the U.S. are dying at 2-3 times the rate of pregnant women in our peer countries. Unfortunately, there is more bad news – the maternal mortality rates in the United States are continuing to rise. Join us for a conversation with a panel of medical experts to better understand why women in the U.S. are facing these risks, what makes you the most vulnerable and what can be done to keep expectant mothers and their babies safe.

The webinar is free and open to the public but requires registration. To register click here:  The Maternal Mortality Crisis - Fighting Systemic Barriers in Women’s Healthcare. Register here and join us for an informative presentation.  

Minding Your Mind is a nonprofit organization that works to prevent the escalation of mental health crises through education. Using the power of storytelling, they provide inspiring, evidence-based education on mental health challenges and create a safe space to discuss mental health issues and how to address them.

Each year, Gwynedd students benefit from a Minding Your Mind assembly featuring a young adult speaker who candidly discusses their experience managing their mental health. This year we invite our parents to participate in “Just Talk About It” an adult version of the student-based assembly featuring Sheila Gillin, LCSW, a licensed social worker and certified child and adolescent psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience in the mental health field. She will explain the signs and symptoms of anxiety, stress and depression in teens and will help you to better understand what is ‘normal teen behavior’ and when you need to seek help.

Ms. Gillin will be joined by Kelly A., a young adult from a loving family, whose desire to be ‘perfect’ led her down a devastating path of eating disorders and substance abuse beginning in middle school.

Register Here

During course selection, students meet with their counselors to determine their class roster for the upcoming year. During the series, Dr. Melissa Sullivan, Dean of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment will review courses for the 2024-25 school year, how the course selection process works, including how to determine and select courses. The Counseling Department will be there to answer any questions you might have. 

 

Participation in this seminar is restricted to parents of currently enrolled students.

 

Register Here

With the growing prominence of AI and the questions surrounding its integration into education, have you considered the impact on your child's learning and future? Throughout the 2023-24 academic year, Gwynedd Mercy faculty and staff have explored innovative ways to leverage AI for targeted student support, active learning, and personalized engagement opportunities.

Dr. Melissa Sullivan, Dean of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, will outline our emerging collaboration with Flint, an all-in-one tutoring platform, highlighting how our students are beginning to benefit from Flint's services. Mr. Sohan Choudhury, Co-Founder and CEO of Flint, will elaborate on how the platform empowers teachers to support student learning while prioritizing student data privacy. He will emphasize that students' critical thinking and overall growth remain the primary focus of a Gwynedd Mercy education.

Social media is everywhere! It is impossible to not access it, use it, or be influenced by it. Although this technological innovation has many wonderful applications, social media use has also been associated with many detrimental consequences, especially for children and teens. So, is there a way to leverage this tool without the negative side effects and consequences? How do we ensure that our teens use social media responsibly and safely? Can we prevent social media from replacing the normalcy of face-to-face interactions and the quality of our family relationships? 

Join us for an informative and thought-provoking conversation with Theresa Hamer, Program Manager for Smart Gen Society. Smart Gen is a nonprofit organization that provides education, advocacy, and resources designed to advise adults on ways to help children navigate the social media landscape. We will discuss real and present online dangers, such as predatory behaviors targeting young girls. We will speak candidly about social media addiction including the brain science that reveals its similarities with alcohol and drug addiction. We will explore ways to ensure that your parent-teen relationship remains strong despite the tendency for teens to favor social media communication over face-to-face interactions. We will also converse about the many positive uses of social media and delve deeper into the ways we can protect our children (and ourselves) from being manipulated and misinformed. 

Full of information and practical advice, this Parent Series session is one that you don’t want to miss! This will be our final Parent Series of the school year. 

This session is open to the public. Please feel free to broadly share the registration link with others. 

FEATURED PRESENTER: Theresa Hamer, Program Manager, Smart Gen Society 

MODERATOR: Mrs. Kate Tobias, Faculty, GMAHS 

CONTRIBUTOR: Mrs. Elizabeth Newton, Faculty, GMAHS 

AUDIENCE: This session is open to everyone. You do not have to be a Gwynedd parent to attend. 

 

REGISTER HERE

Our conversation about 'Parenting Daughters in the Digital Age' will feature Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping us better understand how we can counter the ‘neurological, psychological and social fallout tech poses’ while strengthening relationships with our children and ensuring that they have the social skills that they will need to succeed.

From the comfort of home, join an informative conversation with GMAHS Principal Eileen Carty and Dr. Steiner-Adair as they discuss the fascinating science around how our digital world has changed our teens’ brains, what it means for all aspects of a child’s development and how we can ensure that our children are kind, compassionate, and ethically centered in an age in which one-to-one conversation and engagement has been replaced with snapchat and texting.

Register Here!

During course selection, students meet with their counselors to determine their class roster for the upcoming year. During the series, Mrs. Monica Lapp, Director of School Counseling will review courses for the 2024-25 school year, how the course selection process works, including how to determine and select courses. The Counseling Department will answer any questions you may have. 

Participation in this seminar is restricted to parents of currently enrolled students.

We all know that underage drinking can have devastating consequences for teens and their families. As prom season approaches, these issues become even more prominent in the news and within our social circles. Although statistics are shared, what is often left unsaid are the consequences for parents who wittingly or unwittingly create the conditions in which their underage children can access alcoholic beverages. Join us for a candid conversation with Officer Shannon Gallagher of the Lower Gwynedd Township Police Department about how parents can act to counter the peer pressure their teen may face to consume alcohol and the laws and penalties associated with social hosting in PA. We will also share tips about how to have effective conversation with teens who ‘know it all’. This segment is hosted by Mrs. Kate Tobias, Faculty for Gwynedd’s Physical Education and Health Department.

 

Join us on Wed, May 10 at 7PM for the fourth installment of the Gwynedd Parent Series, "The Effects of Marijuana and Vaping." Vaping and marijuana use has become more mainstream and socially acceptable. Often the health impact of using both products is downplayed or conveyed as being safer than other choices such as smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. We will first explore whether or not these assumptions are valid. Then, we will help parents and guardians to better understand the impact that inhaling these substances may have on a teen's developing mind and body. Kate Tobias, Gwynedd's Health and Phys. Education faculty, Natalie Ullman '14, and Sarah Messina, MA LMFT will host the discussion. Reserve your spot today!

 

Sarah Messina is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has been working with Child Guidance Resource Centers since 2014. Sarah has a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from LaSalle University and a Certification in Addiction Treatment. Trained in Eco-Systemic Structural Family Therapy and Parent Child Interaction Therapy, Sarah believes in the importance of the family and the power of the parent-child relationship. Currently, Sarah is a practicing therapist who provides prevention education and therapy resources to families. These programs include parent, child and family therapy groups, as well as psychoeducation for parents, caregivers, schools, and communities. 

Natalie Ullmann is a Licensed Social Worker. Natalie has an Undergraduate Degree in psychology from Catholic University of America and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work from Temple University. Since entering the mental health field, Natalie has worked as a School Social worker; Domestic Abuse Children’s Counselor; Mental Health Clinician for a juvenile detention center; and is currently working as a Therapist for children, teens, and adults. In addition, Natalie has been working for Child Guidance Resource Centers for 3+ years facilitating parent groups, family groups, and high school programs based in positive family relationships and drug and alcohol prevention. Natalie also graduated from Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School in 2014!