Bearing Down and Bearing Up: Sustaining Morale, Energy, Competence, and Connection in The Face of Fear and Uncertainty

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4:00 – 5:30 pm

Michael Thompson, Ph.D. and Rob Evans, Ed.D.

After four months of emergency online schooling followed by a summer of no-vacation, non-stop planning, many administrators began the school year with their energy and empathy tanks drained. They now face the need to sustain—perhaps indefinitely—the burdens they’ve been bearing: balancing health and safety concerns against the need to return to the mission of educating students. Many administrators feel the need to boost and cheerlead to to keep everyone “up,” an exhausting prospect. Rob and Michael have no magic bullets, but they do know about ways to manage anxiety and stress—including ways to help people cope without boosting—and will offer administrators concrete ways to both help faculty and themselves.

Rob Evans and Michael Thompson are both psychologists and school consultants, both former teachers and former child and family therapists. Between them, they have consulted to roughly 2,000 schools, including hundreds of independent schools (including a majority of CAIS schools), and have provided crisis intervention to many.

Robert Evans is a clinical and organizational psychologist and the Executive Director of The Human Relations Service in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A former high school and pre-school teacher, and for many years a child and family therapist, he has consulted in more than 1,700 schools throughout the U.S. and internationally, working with teachers, administrators, and boards, and speaks widely at educational conferences.

Rob received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his doctorate from Harvard. His interests have focussed on change and resistance to it in schools and organizations, on the challenges of leading innovation, and on changes in American families and their impact on schools. He is currently concentrating on ways to improve collegiality and candor among educators and to promote realistic dialogue about accountability.

He is the author of many articles and three books: Seven Secrets of The Savvy School Leader, The Human Side of School Change, and Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with The Crisis in Childrearing.

Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D. is a consultant, author and psychologist specializing in children and families. He is the supervising psychologist for the Belmont Hill School and has worked in more than seven hundred schools across the United States, as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

He and his co-author, Dan Kindlon, wrote the New York Times best-selling book, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys (Ballantine Books, 1999). He is the author of Speaking of Boys: Answers to the Most-Asked Questions about Raising Sons (Ballantine, 2000), and co-author (with Catherine O’Neill Grace and Larry Cohen, Ph.D.) of Best Friends/Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children (Ballantine, 2001) and Mom, They’re Teasing Me: Helping Your Child Solve Social Problems (Ballantine, 2002.) About Best Friends, Worst Enemies the Publishers Weekly review declared, “Not since Dr. Spock and Penelope Leach has there been such a sensitive and practical guide to raising healthy children.” The Pressured Child: Helping Your Child Achieve Success in School and in Life (with Teresa Barker, Ballantine, 2004) was written to help parents understand the complex journey of children through school, from Kindergarten through senior year. His third book on the psychology of boys, entitled, It’s a Boy!: Understanding Your Son’s Development from Birth to Eighteen, was published in 2008. It focuses on the importance of undirected, free play in the lives of boys. Dr. Thompson’s newest book, Homesick and Happy: How Time Away From Parents Can Help a Child Grow, was published by Ballantine Books in May of 2012.

A dedicated speaker and traveler, Michael Thompson has appeared on The Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC 20/20, CBS 60 Minutes, The Early Show and Good Morning America. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report and has been a guest on NPR’s “Morning Edition” with Susan Stamberg, “Talk of the Nation” with Ray Suarez and the Diane Rhem Show. He wrote, narrated and hosted a two-hour PBS documentary entitled “Raising Cain” that was broadcast nationally in 2006.