For the last ten years, the Community Coalition for Children has strived to bring highly regarded speakers whose research and work with families and children will be meaningful to the children and families of eastern Connecticut. Each year, the program is intended to ignite a dialogue about issues affecting children and healthy child-rearing practices.

Annually, the programs reach an average of over 1,200 students and adults in eastern Connecticut. Both press coverage and attendee comments suggest that the programs have triggered in-depth discussion and interest in positive youth development. Participants in the programs rave about the Community Coalition for Children's ability to meet its goal of providing an avenue for meaningful, productive discussion on children and families in a forum that is always free and open to the public without advance registration.

We invite you to browse through the bios of the speakers that the CCC has been proud to host over the last 10 years.

2006: 10 Year Celebration!!

Conversations About Children: A Decade of Practical Solutions

The Community Coalition for Children celebrated its 10th anniversary year with a very special panel discussion among several of our past presenters. This alumni panel, moderated by Faith Middleton of NPR, discussed current challenges and solutions as we all work together to raise our children.

We were glad to welcome back the following guest speakers to this year's panel:

• Conrad Boeding, M.A., Children of Rage: Preventing Youth Violence after Columbine.
• Dr. Michael Bradley, Ed.D., Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy and The Heart & Soul of the Next Generation: Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Teens.
• Barbara Coloroso, The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander and Just Because It's Not Wrong, Doesn't Make It Right
• Adele Faber, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk and numerous other books.

2005: Dr. Pedro Noguera

A Leading Voice on Education Reform and Diversity

Dr. Pedro Noguera is a "hip", "engaging", and "very knowledgeable" expert who focuses on teaching and achievement across cultures, involving and empowering families in partnership with schools, and parent and student advocacy.

Proof of the Pudding summarizes some of the substantive changes shared by CCC partners as a direct result of the 2005 Community Coalition for Children program with Dr. Noguera

2004: Michael J. Bradley, Ed.D.

Yes Your Teen Teen is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind

Dr. Michael Bradley is the award-winning author of Yes Your Teen is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind. Teens will appreciate the companion volume of Yes, Your Parents Are Crazy! A Teen Survival Handbook

A psychologist practicing in suburban Philadelphia, Dr. Bradley uses recent discoveries about teen brain development. Neuroscientists have confirmed that the growth that occurs between ages 12-20 is “critical to things like intelligence, self awareness, emotional control, impulse restraint, and rational decision-making.

Dr. Bradley helps parents, educators, mental health counselors, and teens themselves understand that teens are not young versions of the adults they will become. They are significantly different. Bridges must be built to connect teens with their parents and other key adults because, Dr. Bradley says, "parents are still the most influential force in your adolescent's life for better and for worse." He teaches adults how to make the first steps to change relationship dynamics.

His vignettes provide humorous, poignant, and expert insights into the challenges that greet teens, parents, educators and counselors as they navigate the fjords of adolescence. He believes that the concept of "inoculating adolescents against the craziness versus isolating them from the insanity" is a complex challenge for contemporary parents.

2003: Edward Hallowell, M.D.

Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

Dr. Ned Hallowell, a child and adult psychiatrist is a genuinely warm and gregarious presenter. An instructor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Massachusetts, he has worked for many years with children and adults with a wide range of emotional and learning Dr. Hallowell is best known for his best-selling book, Driven to Distraction, which focused on attention deficit disorders. Then in a subsequent book he turned his energies to helping parents and teachers discern The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness -- strategies for helping kids create and sustain lifelong joy. His careful analysis of causes of worry, assessments of worry as a tonic or a toxic influence in our lives, and strategies for keeping a healthy balance are explored in his book Worry: Hope and Help For a Common Condition His section "Remedies that Work" enables readers to gain hands-on ways to manage the stressors that are part of the 21st Century.

2002: Barbara Coloroso

Kids Are Worth It! Relating with Wit and Wisdom

Barbara Coloroso is the author of the international best-seller, Kids Are Worth It! Her wit and wisdom are the result of her remarkable life experience. A former Franciscan nun, the parent of three grown children, an educator of special needs children, and a university instructor, she is a highly popular speaker. Her humor and story-telling approach to the often complex issues for parents and teachers make her very appealing to a wide range of audiences.

Other books authored by Ms. Coloroso include:

• The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystander
• From Pre-School Through High School, How Parents and Teachers Can Break the Cycle of Violence.
• Parenting Through Crisis: Helping Kids in Times of Loss, Grief, and Change

2001: Mary Pipher, Ph.D.

Rebuilding Our Families

Dr. Mary Pipher is perhaps best known for her highly successful book Reviving Ophelia, which describes a "girl-poisoning" society that forces a choice between being shunned for staying true to oneself and struggling to stay within a narrow definition of female. She has also written about families, caring for the elderly, and about the newest wave of immigration into the heart of America.

Dr. Pipher contends that people need "protected time and space and to reconnect with one another and the outside world." She sees current American culture as toxic to families because of its emphasis on consumerist autonomy at the expense of the cooperative interrelationship that families required. In The Shelter of Each Other, she challenges each of us to face the truth about ourselves and to find the courage to protect, nurture, and revitalize the families we cherish.

2000: Conrad Boeding, M.A.

Providing A Safe Childhood in Violent Times

As founder and director of the Human Passages Institute in Lakewood, Colorado, Conrad Boeding has devoted his career to helping children and adolescents who have lost the ability to trust. His book, The Love Disorder, describes his methods in practical language so that parents and professionals alike may employ them.

In his work, Children of Rage: Preventing Youth Violence After Columbine, Mr. Boeding illustrates how this psychological problem has developed into a broader social issue, creating a growing subculture of alienated, angry and aggressive youth. In an age of alarming youth violence, Mr. Boeding show us how we can regain our children' trust in the adults and institutions responsible for their care.

Human Passages Institute; 777 S. Wadsworth Blvd, Bldg.1, Suite 105; Lakewood, CO 80226; 303-914-9729

1999: Michael Thompson, Ph.D. and Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D.

Gender Dilemmas: Raising Strong and Competent Girls and Boys

Dr. Michael Thompson co-author of nationally acclaimed best-seller, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys Dr. Thompson is a child and family psychologist practicing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also co-authored Finding the Heart of the Child and has worked with more than one hundred schools across the United States, conducting problem-solving workshops, with parents, teachers, and students.

Dr. Judith V. Jordan, nationally recognized teacher, lecturer, and consultant on women's psychological development, co-authored Women's Growth in Connection and is editor of Women's Growth in Diversity. She has served as Co-Director of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute of the Stone Center at Wellesley College, as an Attending Psychologist at McLean Hospital, and as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School.

1998: Robert Brooks, Ph.D

Raising Resilient Children: Strategies for Fostering Self Esteem & Motivation

Dr. Robert Brooks is a nationally renowned psychologist and lecturer. He is the author of So That's How I was Born and The Self-Esteem Teacher.

Dr. Brooks focuses on raising resilient children and methods to foster self-esteem and motivation. By finding each child's "islands of competence," we build on those strengths to help them succeed. In this way, we discover the "everyday courage" of our children.

1997: Adele Faber

How To Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk

Adele Faber has based her work on the work of the late child psychologist Dr. Haim Ginott. She has won the international praise of mothers and fathers and professional educators-for the simple reason that her successful parenting workshops get results!

In their book How To Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Faber and Elaine Mazlish offer skills based on psychological insights, their own experience as parents, and what they've learned from parents throughout the world. The authors' method is supportive, friendly, and best of all, effective. It offers innovative ways to solve such common problems as:

• How to listen to-and understand your child's concerns
• How to have cooperation in your family without nagging
• How you and your child can deal with feelings
• How to find alternatives to punishment
• How to help your child attain a positive self-image