On May’s episode of PrepTalks, Ned speaks with Katey McPherson, an Arizona-based educational advocate with more than 25 years of experience as a teacher, guidance counselor, and school administrator. They talk about strategies for addressing the anxiety that so many of our middle and high school students suffer from, including the importance of parents and school staff providing a non-anxious presence (or NAP). They also dive into the need to cultivate resilience rather than taking it for granted, and how showing vulnerability and validating our teens’ and tweens’ emotions is critical for building authentic connections. Likewise, Ned and Katey discuss how important it is to allow students the space to develop skills in moving through conflict rather than sweeping it away or just ignoring it.

Follow Ned at @nedjohnson and Katey at @KateyAZ1 on Twitter.

On April’s episode of PrepTalks, Ned speaks with Nefertiti Austin, author of Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America. Ned and Nefertiti talk about her journey, as a single African American woman, to adopt a Black son out of the foster care system. Along the way, she found out how deeply American culture sees motherhood through a white lens, discovered how to navigate the bureaucracies and cultural assumptions around adoption, and learned a great deal about intergenerational healing from trauma.

Follow Ned at @nedjohnson and Nefertiti at @NefertitiAustin on Twitter.

On the March episode of PrepTalks, Ned chats with Chris Balme, co-founder of Argonaut, a live, online program that brings together small groups of middle schoolers to discover their strengths, explore their identity, and find ways to contribute to the world. Chris was previously co-founder and Head of The Millennium School, an independent, progressive laboratory middle school in San Francisco. His new book, Finding the Magic in Middle School, will be published later in 2022. They talk about a period of life that is often very challenging for adolescents but that holds all sorts of potential for growth, as well as about how parents and teachers can make middle school awesome.

Follow Ned at @nedjohnson and Chris at @chrisbalme on Twitter.