Dr. Michael Thompson Workshop for Grades 9-12: The Pressured Child: Helping You Find Success in School and Life

Dr. Michael Thompson will describes the psychological journey that students experience during their thirteen years in school. He shares that young adults almost never judge themselves by grades: they are always monitoring their own development and constantly searching for three things: connection, recognition and a sense of power.

He illustrates how students find those in many different arenas of school life. There are three kinds of students in school: 1) those whose journeys are characterized mostly by success, 2) those whose journeys are characterized by a chronic but manageable struggle, and 3) those whose journeys are characterized by fury and despair. Each journey has its own different pressures. Every student is constantly developing strategies for coping with the pressures that he or she feels.

In order to write his book, Dr. Thompson went back to school, following students, seventh graders through seniors, in independent, Catholic, and public schools. In the book and in this talk, he shares stories from the trenches, taking parents and teachers into the school day experience of children, illuminating how they manage their school careers and how the best educators and wisest parents can support them along the way.