Challenge Success
About Challenge Success
Why Challenge Success?
One of PUSDs goals is to create a positive learning environment that will allow our students to thrive academically, socially and emotionally. We want to help our kids master components of a successful life – to be independent, adaptable, ethical and motivated critical thinkers. We work with Challenge Success to embrace a broad definition of success and to implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning.
PHS/MHS Challenge Success survey and PHS/MHS Healthy Kids Survey data reveal students’ feelings about academic challenges, teacher and parent support, homework, stress and sleep. Based on these results and other data we have collected about the social-emotional health of our students, we are looking at the school climate around student stress and seeing what we can do to support our kids.
Our Mission
We seek to engage the whole student in meaningful learning, balancing academic rigor with social-emotional development, celebrating individual strengths, recognizing failures as opportunities for growth, and respecting and supporting all our students.
Key Initiatives
- Student Club for students to be an integral part of the planning and development process
- Bell Schedule adjusted to allow later start for more sleep
- School Calendar adjustment to end semester before winter break so students have a true break
- Class schedule planner to help plan healthy course load
- Effort to improve teacher/student connections like lawn chair lunches
- Therapy Dogs/Treat giveaways to help relieve stress during finals week
- Ongoing faculty discussions about student stress, meaningful homework, building connections with kids, and identifying and reaching out to kids that are not making connections with adults on campus
Resources for Students and Parents
- Sleep
- Health and Well-being
- School-Life Balance
- Dear My Freshman Self
- Short Denise Pope Video on AP classes
- PHS Counseling Time Management Tool: Time Management Tool
- College and Career
- PHS College and Career Center
- Challenge Success White Paper: Why Engagement Matters More Than Selectivity
- 10 Tips for Surviving the College Application Process
- The Right Way to Choose a College by Denise Pope
- A “Fit” Over Rankings: Why Engagement Matters More than Selectivity
- Turning the Tide II: Reducing Stress in the College Admission Process by Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Turning The Tide: Report on Meaningful Engagement to Others, Community Service and Engagement with the Public Good
- Admissions Deans: Student Response to Covid-19 Pandemic
- Virtual and In-Person Volunteer Opportunities
- Parenting
- https://challengesuccess.org/resources/parenting-during-a-pandemic/
- https://challengesuccess.org/resources/student-story-leah-messing/
- Video: How to support an overly stressed child
- New York Times Opinion: Teenagers are Struggling and It’s Not Just Lockdown
- Kids in the House Videos — Variety of topics from Denise Pope and Madeline Levine
- Raising Well Balanced Kids
- Ted Talk: How to Raise Successful Kids without Overparenting
- Improve Parent-Teen Communication by Validating
- Seven Myths About What it Takes to Raise Successful Adults
- How to Recognize Mental Illness in Your Teen
- A Different Kind of College Prep
- Making your Home a Safe Haven
- Piedmont Parents Network
- Challenge Success Website and Book Recommendations