The Greater Victoria Teenhood Summit – A Virtual Event for Parents

The Greater Victoria Teenhood Summit – A Virtual Event for Parents

The Greater Victoria Teenhood Summit – A Virtual Event for Parents

An interactive event designed to help us re-examine our role as parents

Parenting is never easy, but a particularly challenging time in the life of a family is when kids reach adolescence. Not only do our kids begin to go through significant growth and changes in their development, but our relationship with them, our place in their lives and the level of influence we have significantly changes as well. It can be a rocky and turbulent time, as teens and parents learn to navigate their relationship together like never before.

Topics this event will cover:

  • effectively parenting teens and creating harmonies relationships;
  • understanding the power of parenting from a steady, present place;
  • ways we can be less triggered by our teens;
  • social media use and its impact;
  • online safety;
  • teen mental health and adolescent development; 
  • mental health red flags and how to get help;
  • tools and support systems for good mental health. 

Why attend:

  • you’re interested in understanding your role as parent of a teen;
  • you’re concerned about technology and social media use and safety;
  • you wonder what you can do to help your teen feel more resilient;
  • you’d like to create more peace and less conflict in your day-to-day family life. 

How it works:

  • As a participant, you simply purchase a ticket and then tune in during on our session date using the Zoom link provided to you. 
  • You’ll sit back and learn from insightful experts.
  • You’ll receive a recording a few days after the event so you can review each session again. 

You’ll leave this event feeling excited and inspired to embark on a new chapter in your family’s journey. 

Date and time

Sat, February 26, 2022
9:00 AM – 12:30 PM PST

All participant will receive a recording after the event

Discussion topics

  • A new model for parenting teens
  • Social media and technology
  • Adolescent mental health

Schedule

  • 9:00 Dr. Carrie Contey / A new model for paretning teens
  • 10:30 Marc Ladouceur / Social media and teens
  • 11:30 Megan Ames / Adolesent mental health

Location

Online event
Recording will be provided after the event

Ticket price

$20

Refund policy

Contact the organizer to request a refund.
Eventbrite’s fee is nonrefundable.

More Details

The Greater Victoria Teenhood Summit – A Virtual Event for Parents is an interactive event designed to help us re-examine our role as parents as well as explore some important topics (technology and mental health) in the lives of our teens. We’ve invited extraordinary parenting experts who will give you insights, tools and tactics to parent your teen with peace and confidence.

If you’re feeling lost, hopeless or a little out of your depth, you’re not alone. Parents of teens almost universally share the same worries and concerns: will I be able to help my child to transition safely and happily into adulthood? Can we create and adapt to a new healthy and loving relationship? Can we get through the next few years together without our home feeling like a constant battleground?

The answer is YES!

Join us for this half-day virtual event designed to inspire a new perspective on parenting and reinvigorate our commitment to raising resilient teens and building peaceful families.

About Westmont High School

Westmont was founded 67 years ago by an independent community of parents and teachers passionate about creating an environment that inspired students to learn through experiences and respected the individual and their own interests, developmental needs and speeds, following the principles of Maria Montessori.

Westmont High School is intended to disrupt the current educational model that has students segregated from the real world in a classroom environment that treats content areas as siloed from each other and what happens out in communities around the world. For many students, they see little connection between what happens in their classrooms and daily life. Many programs that seek to provide that real world experience are seen as vocational schools or non-academic streams. Westmont High School intends to provide real world experiences with exceptional academics and personal growth opportunities, adhering to that most fundamental Montessori principle of developing the whole individual. The program will be demanding of students, challenging them in all realms, but at the same time immensely rewarding to be a part of. It will provide an experience like no other school. Westmont High School sets students up for a world that is rapidly changing, with new professions and vocations that we cannot even imagine.

Guest Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Carrie Contey

Dr. Carrie County

A New Model for Parenting Teens

Carrie Contey, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized coach, author, speaker and educator. Her work offers a new perspective on human development, parenting and family life. She guides, supports and inspires her clients to live with wide-open and courageous hearts so they can approach family life with skill and spaciousness. Carrie received her doctorate in clinical psychology with an emphasis on prenatal and perinatal psychology and is masterful at synthesizing and articulating the science, psychology and spirituality of humanhood. She is the creator of several “personal growth through parenting” programs. She is also the co-founder of the Slow Family Living movement and the co-author of CALMS: A Guide To Soothing Your Baby. Carrie has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, NPR, CBS radio and in many publications including Time, Parenting and The Boston Globe.

Social Media and Teens: Navigating An Ever-Changing Terrain

Understanding the connected world of teens can be challenging for parents because adults don’t communicate online in the same way and are not necessarily using the same social media. Even more challenging is the reality that there’s always something new coming around the corner. This session will help parents better understand how their kids are using social networking and will provide them with tips and tools they can use to help them minimize negative experiences and maximize the positive opportunities that social media has to offer.

As a Media Education Specialist at MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital and media literacy, Marc Alexandre Ladouceur creates resources for educators, parents and community groups and conducts outreach activities with schools, school boards, education ministries, faculties of education and community organizations across Canada. He holds a Masters Degree in Theology, as well as Bachelors in Education and Theology. Marc Alexandre has previously worked as a teacher in the Ontario and Alberta school systems, as a facilitator in Ontario schools and as an editor and translator. He believes in the well-being of all persons experiencing the rapid growth of technology through comprehensive digital literacy and intersubjective education.

Marc Alexandre Ladouceur

Megan Ames

Ph.D., R.Psych.

Dr. Carrie County

Adolescent Mental Health: Raising Resilient Teens

The inner and outer worlds of an adolescent can feel extraordinarily turbulent. For those of us who love and care for teens, we know we can feel powerless when it comes to helping them navigate the ups and downs of adolescent life. This session is designed to tackle such issues as anxiety, depression and loneliness, and provide parents with thoughtful guidance for helping their teen traverse emotional, social and psychological weather in healthy and connective ways.

Dr. Megan Ames is a registered psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on how health behaviours (e.g., physical activity) are related to mental health outcomes during adolescence and young adulthood. She also holds research interests in supporting autistic postsecondary students. She provides client-centred psychological services to children, adolescents, and their families in private practice.

The Westmont Prize: Design Workshop

The Westmont Prize: Design Workshop

18 Teams, 76 Students, 1 Great Event

We have just finished our 1st ever Westmont Prize competition and it was a great success! We had schools from all across Greater Victoria engage in an exploration of sustainability issues, then create actionable solutions to these issues.

The whole competition was modelled after our high school program with the key elements being:

  • project based learning
  • providing mentorship experiences in the topics being explored
  • engaging in content that matters to students
  • moving academic learning out of textbooks into the real world

The focus of the competition was on the process students used to explore the topics. We wanted to provide tools for students to discover and think critically about the issues. All of this culminating in video presentations of their process and solutions.

All of the teams did amazingly well. In the end, there was one team that was the winner of the $10,000 scholarship to the post-secondary institution of their choice. Check out their submission.

Selection of student videos
The Westmont Prize 2021

The Westmont Prize 2021

The Westmont Prize 2021

Amazing Ideas

Given the recent devastating floods, mudslides and washouts in British Columbia, it’s obvious that the climate is changing here on Vancouver Island and around the world. Climate change and a host of other issues are having significant impacts on our communities. One response people have in these situations is to ask what can I do? This fall Westmont Montessori School hosted the first annual Westmont Prize, where students in grades 7 – 11 collaborated in teams of 4, and picked one of five sustainability issues and found workable solutions to be agents of change. Teams could pick one of five issues: the toxic drug overdose crisis, climate change, living wage, affordable housing and old growth logging. The Westmont Prize is designed to have students identify solutions that can answer the question, “what can I do?” about these important issues, and have them ideate solutions that can be implemented.

The Westmont Prize challenged students to collaborate and find solutions that could be implemented by teens in the region. It was inspiring to see middle and high school students dig deeper to understand issues that are impacting our communities and find real solutions through working together. Students were inspired by the process and to have a platform to share their ideas. The Westmont Prize showed all involved that the answer to “what can I do” when faced with significant sustainability issues can be answered by passionate teens working together.

The Westmont Prize had students pick one of the five sustainability topics and participate in a one-hour presentation by an expert speaker. These presentations were then followed by a question-and-answer session for students to explore the issue in greater detail. Expert speakers also provided a resource list for further learning. 

Students then met at the Olympic View Golf Course for an all-day workshop on how to better understand problems using a problem-solving framework, develop solutions using a solution-framework, and received professional presentations on impactful pitches and how to create powerful videos.

Students then had 4 days to create a 5 – 7 minute video that outlined the problem they picked, a solution that they created and that could be implemented by teens like them, and a reflection on the collaboration process. A panel of five judges then reviewed all 18 video submissions and using a scoring rubric, determined the top winners.

The winning team was announced at the Awards Gala, held at the Farquhar Auditorium at the University of Victoria in late November. A summary video from each team was viewed by the audience and every team received feedback from one of five judges. Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich Gulf Islands along with Magnus Hanton, Head of School at Westmont awarded a shared $10,000 scholarship prize to the winning team made up of Zeinab Guitouni, a grade 9 student from Glen Lyon Norfolk School, Thea Damian, a grade 9 student from Claremont Secondary, Matteo Carere and Sebastian Damina, both grade 7 students from Ecole Brodeur. Silver prize winners were given seasons passes to WildPlay and the two teams tied for bronze were awarded gift cards for IMAX.

The Westmont Prize

A Taste of Westmont’s High School

The Westmont Prize is modeled after our High School program. In our High School program, experiential learning comes to the fore and our learning is framed by projects tackled through the model of design thinking. We bring the students to the world both virtually and in person, by creating learning experiences in progressive environments that offer knowledge from the real world not a textbook – from business incubators to makerspaces, organic farms to ocean biology labs, university lectures to expert mentorships, local explorations to global adventures.

Intrigued? Find out more on our High School page, or Subscribe to our newsletter to read about the exciting things happening in our program.