Gunn Parent Education Mission Statement:  We strive to create forums that support vibrant learning communities and collaboration among Gunn High School parents and families.

For every forum we offer or sponsor, we aim to:

• Provide opportunities for greater understanding and reflection
• Communicate with all appropriate stakeholders
• Minimize scheduling conflicts with other school events
• Actively increase efforts to reach families in our Chinese and Hispanic communities, as well as parents new to our Gunn High School community
• Limit events to support overall balance and wellness of our parent community

For questions or comments, contact gunnparented@gunnpta.org.

Past Parent Ed Events

Parent Ed Webinar with Scott Fried – Parenting for Beyond the Pandemic

From Tuesday, March 16: Scott Fried is a youth educator, speaker, and annual lecturer at Colby College who loves listening to students. He describes the paradox of adolescence as that our children long to be seen for who they are, but are terrified of being “found out.” As they return to school, their shifting ways of being seen will pose different challenges from those they’ve faced in distance learning. In this online webinar, Scott will give advice to parents on how to listen to our children with acceptance, to help them trust us with the parts of themselves they think are “not enough” and face those new challenges. See the recording of this event here.

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Here is the link to Parent Meeting held by the Gunn Counseling Department and Wellness on dealing with stress and setting good online learning habits, held right before Winter Break December 2020.

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KARA Workshop: Caring Presence – Supporting Our Children in Their Grief 

From September 28, 2020 — This event was cohosted by the Gunn PTSA, Wellness Center, and the Palo Alto Chinese Parents Club. Please see the recording at https://youtu.be/IuZ4t4poB8I. Learn from Jaymie Byron and Alex Macy of KARA how to look at grief in the social context, understand how to recognize symptoms of grief, and develop a compassionate presence to sit with our student’s grief and tools to support them.

Screenagers Next Chapter:
Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience

From January 23, 2020 — Filmmaker and physician Dr. Delaney Ruston takes the conversation around screens and teens to the next level with Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER: Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience, a film that examines the science behind teens’ emotional challenges, the interplay of social media, and most importantly, what can be done in our schools and homes to help teens build crucial skills to navigate stress, anxiety, and depression in our digital age. Please join us! All are welcome.

The handout with tips is here.
The Spanish handout is here.
Additional materials on resources for developing resilience can be found here on the Screenagers site.

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Carl Honore: Slow Parenting

From November 4, 2019 — Childhood has come to resemble a race to perfection. Result: children and parents are frazzled and unfulfilled. But change is coming. A global movement (think Slow Education, Slow Families, Slow Parenting, Slow Kids, etc) is finding ways to give children the time and space to explore the world on their own terms, take reasonable risks, play freely, get bored, be children again. In this keynote, Carl explored this powerful drive to reinvent childhood for the 21st century, touched on themes ranging from technology and extracurricular activities to education, safety and consumerism. He showed how to strike the right balance between doing too much and doing too little for children, and how slowing down can help them reach their full potential (as well as making family life a lot more fun!).

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Paul Kanarak: Separating Fact from Fiction
in College Admissions

From October 24, 2019 — Slides from the talk are here.
The mythology that surrounds admissions is both pervasive and frequently painfully wrong. The good news is that it’s incorrect in a way that is fundamentally good news for families. This session was led by our guest presenter – Paul Kanarek – he discussed both the accuracies and inaccuracies that lead to erroneous assumptions about college affordability and admissibility. Mr. Kanarek substantiated the rumors about admissions in 2019 and beyond that are, in fact, correct. As he has showed in past years when he was at our college events, Mr. Kanarek is an informed, articulate and entertaining speaker who possesses both knowledge and insight on this subject, a set of skills that he developed first as the co-founder of The Princeton Review in California and then as the CEO of Collegewise.

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William Stixrud and Ned Johnson: The Self Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

From May 12, 2019 — Information is here.

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Syrous Parsay: College Planning

From May 21, 2018 — Information is here.

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