In this dynamic keynote presentation, Dr. Gurian will explore how the minds of boys and girls learn and grow, including brain differences that impact K – 12 education, early childhood, and social emotional development throughout the lifespan.  He will provide insight into best teaching, parenting, counseling, and mentoring practices for both girls and boys, and safe, effective electronics and technology standards for various stages of child development.

Michael’s presentation will include PET, SPECT, and MRI scans that display brain differences, and he will bring the latest research in both of his newest nonfiction books, Saving Our Sons (2017) and The Minds of Girls (2018), focusing on educating, raising, and counseling boys, and educating, raising, and counseling girls.

Michael will also lead two working lunch discussions.  The books that underlie these discussions are Saving Our Sons and The Stone Boys (2019) for Saturday and The Minds of Girls for Sunday.  We hope you will read these books ahead of time.  In these working lunches, we will study and strategize regarding violence/suicide prevention, and mental and emotional health in our school communities.

A note from Michael Gurian:   “While we are all human and thus we experience many similarities with one another, fifty years of brain research also show us implicit and explicit differences in the various ways boys and girls experience life and education.   Though these differences appear on a spectrum, contrary to what some people argue, difference is not a bad thing.  The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke has a beautiful line, ‘What locks itself into sameness has congealed.”  Dynamism lies much more in diversity than we might realize.  For human institutions such a family and school systems to succeed with all children and the whole child, they must succeed first and foremost with boys and girls.”

Dr. Gurian’s second keynote focuses on poverty- and trauma-informed classrooms, with a powerful eye towards empathy and resilience-building.  Michael will help teachers, counselors, parents and others to develop trauma sensitive classrooms and environments across the socioeconomic and school spectrum.  He will discuss the impact trauma has on the brains of children at various ages, and boys and girls specifically, including hidden trauma in the last year of the pandemic crisis, nutrition issues,  sleeplessness, food allergies, and endocrine disruptors that constitute cellular and brain trauma.  Participants will learn practical strategies for building strong relationships and attachments with traumatized children, as well as those raised in poverty.

Michael will also tell a bit of his own story.  A product of early childhood trauma, he scores a 7 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACE survey.  The publication of his newest book, The Stone Boys, made public some of his own trauma.  We hope you will read The Stone Boys ahead of time for a deep dive into boys’ potential trauma-responses in particular.

For two decades, Dr. Fletcher (“Fletch”) has been teaching in Los Angeles urban schools where she is now the principal of Augustus F. Hawkins High School.  In her keynote, she will focus specifically on the learning and life-needs of children of color.  Issues of culture and conflict will be explored, including ways that boys of color escalate anger, and are not understood.  Dr. Fletcher will feature success strategies for helping young men and women de-escalate after being involved in a conflict, and identify triggers that make things worse.

Emboldened by her work with GI in the Greater Phoenix Urban League’s Head Start Pilots in Phoenix, Arizona, Fletch will integrate early childhood strategies with K – 12 strategies.  Overall in her professional work, Fletch is a master at supporting students of all ages in building resiliency.  A testimony to the power of relationships herself, Fletch will share part of her own personal story.  

A youth football coach, mentor, and child advocate, Marion Hill has worked with children and educators throughout his professional life.  He currently serves as an administrator for Head Start and a Gurian Certified Trainer with the Greater Phoenix Urban League.  Dynamic, visionary, and deeply committed to giving back, Marion is the founder of M.A.N.C.A.V.E. (Men All Need to be Caring Actively-Engaged, and Encouraged), a fatherhood program designed to encourage fathers/male role models to be actively engaged in their child’s growth and development.

In his morning keynote, Marion Hill will focus specifically on how to bring fathers, male role models, and other essential men into the learning experiences of boys and girls.  As he tells his own powerful story, Marion will bring to life compelling anecdotes from his two decades of work in this field.  He will also provide success strategies based in successes M.A.N.C.A.V.E. is having as it works to help boys and girls, especially in under-resourced neighborhoods and classrooms, get the paternal nurturing that they need.