The Grammy-nominated Alphabet Rockers joined us November 15 at the McLean Community Center with a fun night of songwriting and collaboration, inspiring us to stand up to hate and be our brave beautiful selves. Parents and children became changemakers that use imagination and art rooted in self-acceptance as tools for change, inspiring generations of empowerment. You may have seen them on CBS This Morning or featured on YouTube Kids, and they sang and danced right along with us as we created songs to advocate for diversity, equality, and inclusion. For more information about the Alphabet Rockers, visit www.alphabetrockers.com.

The SCC hosted another successful and very well-received CEU workshop for practitioners with Lisa Ferentz. These events function as a small fundraiser for the SCC while providing practitioners in our community with an opportunity to earn industry-required continuing education units and network with each other.

Thank you especially to Embark Behavioral Health for cosponsoring this program!

We are planning to host additional CEU workshops in the coming year, so stay tuned!

Our Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) is gearing up in January to begin planning and training for new members to hold a more traditional Middle School Forum (MSF) for our two middle schools in January. Middle School Forum is a program where YAC students from Langley and McLean High Schools visit Cooper and Longfellow Middle Schools to talk everything high school. Middle schoolers can ask about academics, athletics, social events in and out of school, boys, girls, lunch time--anything. YAC-ers answer with candor and speak from their individual perspectives, showing middle schoolers that there are many different ways to navigate high school, and choices are theirs to make. YAC responses point to the value of knowing yourself, making choices that are right for you, and being prepared to deal with the consequences of your actions.

Traveling While Black Virtual Reality Experience

The SCC is supporting the McLean Community Center's Traveling While Black VR experience. Registration is free through December. Register for a one-hour timeslot by clicking here.

In Traveling While Black VR, the immersion of 360° footage draws viewers into living history lessons told around a booth in Ben’s Chili Bowl. The Washington, D.C. restaurant has been a mainstay of the African American community since 1958, bearing witness to significant Civil Rights milestones that are woven into the film in powerful snippets of footage. The Traveling While Black VR experience/film was directed by Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams.

Registration is required. MCC will sign in participants at the top of the hour, with a short introduction to the Occulus VR set, followed by the film that lasts approximately 20 minutes. Read more about the project here.

Join a BOOSTING BRAVERY team, receive volunteer hours, and grow your leadership skills!

If you have any additional questions about the program please email info@boostingbravery.com.  

We are excited to welcome Julie back to McLean on April 26! Returning this time in a partnership with The Potomac School, she’ll discuss her new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, as well as her previous books, How to Raise an Adult and Real American: A Memoir, Julie’s story of growing up Black and biracial.

When Julie visited in 2016, it was to a packed, standing-room only auditorium (and some crazy thunderstorm and power outage, for those who remember!). Julie is an amazing and entertaining speaker; she tailors her talks to her audience (and comes to us from Palo Alto, California, a very similar community to ours), and shares actionable ideas from her own experience as a parent, college dean of freshman, and woman of color.

We are planning book talks and an opportunity to purchase Julie’s books prior to the event and book signing. More details and registration to come in the new year!

Right in the Middle Virtual Conference

Middle school is the time in a girl’s life when she begins to form a lasting sense of who she is in the world. There are forces at work that can fill a middle school girl with doubt, particularly the media and her peers. But moms have more impact than they think in keeping those at bay and being a source of strength and peace for their daughters. Right in the Middle is a golden opportunity for moms to learn to help their daughters find and keep a strong sense of identity, self-worth, joy, and community throughout their middle school years.

The conference will be held via Zoom on Sunday, February 27, 2022 For more information, click here. Then, mark your calendars and register here.

Former SCC speaker Ana Homayoun and DC-area school therapist Phyllis Fagell co-hosted a webinar on friendship and how to navigate school social dynamics. You can watch it here.

from the Washington Post's On Parenting Blog

Phyllis Fagell responds to a parent who says, “I just want someone to tell me that everything is going to be okay.” Read more...

My response, in summary: You are not alone and the struggle is real. I am a huge proponent of more sleep for teen health and development, but I am also a huge proponent of giving kids time to connect with their peers in the ways that are most culturally normative for their peer group. This creates competing priorities, but such is life. Now what? If this were my child, and she ticked off the boxes in terms of being productive at school, helping around the house, being generally pleasant sometimes (for example, able to have nice conversation at family meals), and was moving her body every day a bit, I would loosen the time parameters around tech.

If the bedtime conflict in your household goes beyond limits and parameters around technology, find some helpful information and best practices in a recent article I wrote for CNN: Learn to let go of sleep battles with your teen. In this article, I take a broader approach to how parents can protect and prioritize sleep in the household.

Source: Michelle Icard newsletter, https://michelleicard.com