for Educators

What Everyone Else Thinks:
Helping Middle Schoolers Fight PAA*

(*Peer Approval Addiction)

Challenges to being your own person in middle school can be huge, with the cost of losing oneself, dangerously high. The desperation of 6th-8th graders to fit in often leads to regrettable choices. Some are life altering and many leave emotional scars. The rest are just plain embarrassing and/or hurtful. Middle Schoolers need educators who understand their social reality. They also need more caring adults who get that an adolescent’s brain often works against her.  School administrators, teachers and counselors need practical strategies for helping students make choices that reflect who they really are, in middle school and beyond.

Annie Fox is a Master teacher who has helped thousands of educators transform their schools into more inclusive, respectful places by giving them practical strategies for helping students. Annie’s in-service trainings offer stress management skill-building tools plus curricula that support students’ social/emotional development in addition to teacher well being.

The goals of an Annie Fox In-Service training are:

• Understanding the role peers play in a young adolescent’s social/emotional development (That includes bullies, friends and “frenemies”)
• [Annie] immediately drew us in with her warmth, charisma and intellect while discussing the social and physiological issues challenging our youth today. We all walked away more clear-headed, and with an effective and simple set of tools we can immediately use...

  —Jacqueline Tabb, Director of Programs, DrawBridge,
  San Rafael, CA
  Appreciating stress as a survival mechanism
• Exploring how over-the-top stress responses encourage Peer Approval Addiction and negatively impact well-being, social success, decision making and academic progress
• Defining the elements of a healthy friendship (2-way trust, respect, honesty, support, shared values, conscious choice-making, communication)
• Learning realistic models for teaching and learning about Real Friends vs. The Other Kind

Interested in hearing what others had to say about Annie’s professional development in-service trainings?  Need more info?  Want to see Annie’s schedule of upcoming events.