About the presenter
Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. Challenge Success is an expanded version of the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project that Dr. Pope founded and directed from 2003-2008. She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001), which was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Jossey-Bass, 2015). Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. She is a 3-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award and was honored with the 2012 Education Professor of the Year “Educators’ Voice Award” from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. Prior to teaching at Stanford, Dr. Pope taught high school English in Fremont, CA and college composition and rhetoric courses at Santa Clara University. She lives in Los Altos, CA with her husband and three children.
About the Families Connected Speaker Series
In June 2016, LSM Communications, LLC (LSM), created and privately funded the Families Connected Speaker Series as the in-person educational component of the South Bay Families Connected project. In August of 2016, LSM partnered with Beach Cities Health District to help fund the series, and in September 2017, together we established co-sponsorships with SBFC's Partner Districts, Manhattan Beach Unified School District, Redondo Beach Unified School District, and Hermosa Valley Unified School District. The three Beach Cities school districts provide the venues and help shape the presentations topics and content. The series has grown dramatically from its first event at Pages Bookstore as a direct result of these partnerships, yet it still remains true to our original mission of connecting all South Bay parents with current information, trusted professionals, and with other parents in our shared goal of helping all youth thrive and stay on a healthy path to maturity. We're all in this together.