The Meanest Generation: Teaching Civility, Empathy, Kindness, & Compassion to our Angriest Children 

In these profound and life-changing presentations, Dr. Malcolm Smith, one of the nation’s leading educators on bullying, peer victimization, anger and incivility will bring 30 years of research and practice in the classroom, on the streets and in youth programs across the nation to bare on what has been called an epidemic of incivility.  He will also provide clear, specific, and dynamic strategies that will change how you care for, interact with, and heal angry children and youth.  

Two sessions are available.  The morning session is geared for professionals working with children and teens in a variety of settings.  The evening session is geared for parents, educators, and the general public (Certificates of attendance for continuing education are available at both sessions).  

By the end of these training sessions, participants will:

•  Morning Session (9am-Noon)
  • Comprehend and be able to clearly identify fundamental social/emotional changes in this generation of young people and understand why and how they have occurred.
  • Discuss characteristics of bullies/victims/bystanders from a social emotional perspective.
  • Discuss developmental character traits that can prevent bullying.
  • Identify three types of bullying behavior and identify strategies to assist young people in changing that behavior.
  • Identify three types of anger in young people and understand clear strategies and approaches for dealing with them in classrooms, hospitals, juvenile facilities and other youth service settings.
  • Apply knowledge of the “Fear/Anger/Violence triangle theory” to both their work settings and everyday life.
• Evening Session (6:30pm-8:30pm):
  • Apply knowledge of how social attachment failure has caused a connected generation to feel more alone, isolated and distrustful than any generation before them.
  • Develop clear concise strategies for caring for victims of bullying and for re-educating children who bully.
  • Apply the correlations between mental illness and angry behavior, peer victimization and develop treatment protocols.
  • Identify common parenting and educational practices that both harm and hinder our children’s social and emotional growth and be able to work with educators and parents to develop behavior strategies that work.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Dr. Malcolm Smith has earned a well deserved reputation as one of the nation’s leading authorities on bullying, peer victimization and the epidemic of anger that our young people are experiencing.  In-spite of giving his parents a really hard time, he has been caring for and about young people for almost 40 years.

 Dr. Smith is currently a Professor of Education at the Plymouth State University in New Hampshire and winner of the University’s Social Justice Award.  He is a leading expert in the field of social emotional learning and the Founder and Executive Director of the Courage to Care Institute, a national program that has been shown to produce impeccable results in teaching empathy, compassion and kindness to young people, thus dramatically changing their behavior.  He is the former Director of the Karl Menninger National Youth Care Training Center and was a close personal friend and colleague of Dr. Menninger, the late pioneering psychiatrist.   Dr. Smith was the architect of  the New Hampshire school safety law, considered to be one of the most effective bullying laws in the nation.  He has also personally responded to over 52 school shootings and interviewed hundreds of violent criminals under the age of 18.  He is the author of “The Peaceful Intervention Program, Caring Safely for Angry Children and Youth;” The  “Realistic Parenting Series;” and countless publications and articles. 

Dr. Smith’s message is simple:  “We have to start teaching our young people civility again in our homes, our schools, our communities or we will endanger our democracy.”  His ability as a teacher, storyteller and researcher make him one of the most sought after speakers in the nation.  Recently, National Public Radio called him “the one force that just might just singlehandedly solve our nation’s civility crisis”