Earlier this month, the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, hosted a webinar called “Helping Children Thrive in an Age of Uncertainty.”
The webinar is a dynamic conversation that addresses the question: “In this time of historic uncertainty and challenge, what does it mean for children to ‘thrive,’ and what will it take to promote thriving in enduring and equitable ways?”
The discussion draws on the work of talented academics and their visionary ideas of what thriving could mean. It touches on the importance of joy, flourishing, having the opportunity to dream, and how thriving could be a community-wide resource that community members share over the course of their lives.
Here at City Connects, these ideas are a crucial part of our model. Our coordinators focus on meeting students’ needs and on offering them compelling opportunities like music lessons and summer camp. The goal is to help children thrive in school, at home, and as they grow into adults.
The webinar takes these ideas further by considering the large-scale structural changes that could promote thriving.
The webinar featured a panel discussion introduced by Eric Dearing, Executive Director of the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, and moderated by Jackie Mader, a Hechinger Report journalist. The panel members are:
• Vivian L. Gadsden, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
• Richard J. Murnane, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Aisha Khizar Yousafzai, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and
• Henrik Daae Zachrisson, University of Oslo Faculty of Educational Sciences
The obstacles, as the panelists discuss, are considerable, ranging from racism and poverty to homelessness to unaddressed health challenges such as pregnancy and birth complications and malnourishment. In the United States, there is weak integration among the systems that serve children and families, which can lead to fractured services.
The panelists also point to key solutions, such as universal pre-k and universal health care, eliminating unstable work schedules that strain parents, and reforming the juvenile justice system. In addition, higher investments in preschool teachers would help children, while paid family leave could create more stable environments for infants.
The panelists were joined by three members of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. They are:
• Katarina Sauter, a student studying Elementary Education & Applied Psychology
• Catalina Rey Guerra, a student studying Applied Developmental Psychology, and
• Earl Edwards, a professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education
Sauter, Guerra, and Edwards ask questions that prompt discussions on family engagement, allowing parents to stay home with their sick children, the importance of equity, the role of play, the role of the arts, the fact that many children are not included in the datasets that academics and researchers study, and how City Connects brings resources to students.
To learn more, please watch the webinar.
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