David Walsh

I had the opportunity to go to a talk by David Walsh, world recognized expert in adolescent brain behavior and the impact of the media on adolescents. His organization, Media Wise, researches this topic and provides information to parents, teachers and policy makers. His findings provide all of us with valuable insight as to how adolescents operate in this fast-paced electronically stimulated world of today. He also has developed some ideas on how we as parents and teachers could be doing some things which might be detrimental in the long run. One finding that has some significant implications for us in schools is this: A long term study has demonstrated that individual discipline has twice as much impact on student achievement as does intelligence. So while we work hard on content knowledge in order to demonstrate competence, could students be better served by focusing more on developing skills which lead to self-discipline? We are New Century strive for a balance in these areas. While we know that academic performance is important, we also are aware of the fact the the character of the student, which is able to be molded by what we do and how we interact with students, is extremely important to the overall development of students.