Welcome to Week Fourteen of Once More, With Feeling.
Pardon the break in newsletter format.
I wanted to take the moment to wish you a Happy Halloween on one of my favorite days of the year, and also to alert you that my new book is available for pre-order.
As you may have read elsewhere, the number of pre-orders for a new book has an outsize effect on its success - it has downstream effects on Amazon recommendation algorithms, the chances that small booksellers will take a chance on stocking it, and whether libraries include it on their shelves.
A friend in the industry told me that 100 pre-orders is a critical number - and hey, I responded, I have 24 cousins! Surely I can get to 100.
If you are curious what the book is about, I post the description here:
An investigation into the mental health crisis affecting young adults today, and an impassioned argument for creating learning environments characterized both by compassion and challenge.
Alarming statistics in recent years indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among youth. To identify solutions, psychologist and professor Sarah Rose Cavanagh interviews a roster of experts across the country who are dedicating their lives to working with young people to help them actualize their goals, and highlights voices of college students from a range of diverse backgrounds.
Cavanagh also brings the reader on an invigorating tour of pedagogical, neuroscientific, and psychological research on mental health—one that involves her own personal journey from panic to equilibrium.
The result of these combined sources of inquiry indicates that to support youth mental health, we must create what Cavanagh calls compassionate challenge— first, we need to cultivate learning and living environments characterized by compassion, and then, we need to guide our youth into practices that encourage challenge, helping them face their fears in an encouraging, safe, and even playful way.
Mind Over Monsters is a must-read for teachers, administrators, parents, and young people themselves.
I also highlight insights from one particular chapter in this recent essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“4 Classroom Lessons from Haunted Houses”), and share some of the overall messages in this interview with my home institution, Simmons University (“Senior Associate Director of CFE Sarah Rose Cavanagh Tackles Monsters”).
Thank you for considering it.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear what your Halloween celebration plans are (or were, if you celebrated over the weekend!). My best bud Julie Sargent and I are throwing a Stephen King-inspired Halloween party next weekend. We’ll be following many of Priya Parker’s recommendations for gathering, which I outline here in this Medium post.
Enjoy - and have some chocolate!