A 30-year veteran in education and the father of two, the Saline Middle School principal discovered strategies to help parents provide adolescent children with the skills they needed to make the right decisions.
"I learned that there wasn't much (information) out there for parents of adolescents. It was more like, 'Fasten your seat belts and see what happens,'" said Cooper, who lives in Ann Arbor.
The educator will share his insights with parents 6:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at the Manchester High School auditorium as part of the Manchester Middle School Parent Teacher Student Association Enrichment Evening. All parents in the district are invited to attend the free event.
"It's the responsibility of the parent to provide a safety structure," Cooper said.
That structure includes support for the child, communication and a value system, he said.
"No matter what, these are things a parent has to provide," he said. "Support has to happen."
Cooper said all parents should be mindful of their own background, which may affect how they deal with certain issues.
He said children learning to become adults are growing quickly and going through a lot of changes.
"In a study in which we asked who is most important to your self-esteem, every student but one said their parents," Cooper said.
When parents were asked what they thought their child's response would be, the parents indicated they thought the children would choose friends over parents.
"Kids are watching their parents very closely, even when they say they can take care of themselves, and are figuring things out," he said.
Cooper said that neither restrictive nor permissive parenting practices provide for healthy growth of a child.
"Supportive parents are not raising kids, they are raising adults," he said.
Cooper said an example of an experimental decision an adolescent child could make might be to dye his or her hair green.
"I would not get upset with green hair. Green dye is going to wash away. But I would have a problem if (a student) put on a T-shirt with (a beer slogan) on it. If they identify with drinking, that's a problem," he said.
Cooper began his career at a high school in Plymouth, where he created programs to help students,
"I recognized very quickly that there were some kids with a lot of problems," he said. "I wanted to help them, rather than do paperwork."
Cooper has co-suthored "How to Keep Being a Parent When Your Child Stops Being a Child" with Rick McCoy, a teacher in Plymouth. Both give lectures to parents on how to be better parents to their children throughout adolescence and beyond.
Cooper said he has initiated 15 alternative education programs since his career began in 1975, and some are still in operation today. Many of them focus on helping kids reconnect with school, address obstacles and help build skills to help them later in life.
"All of these were paid for by grants," Cooper said, adding that he helped apply for several grants, including one that awarded $600,000 to expand a program at a middle school in Plymouth.
"When we wrote up the proposal, we were already doing it (at the high school). It wasn't hypothetical," he said.
Saline High School, where Cooper is top administrator, was among three schools in Michigan to be named a "School to Watch" by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, which Cooper considers an honor.
Cooper has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wittenberg University, a master's degree in counseling from Western Michigan University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Eastern Michigan University. He and his wife, Jane, lived in Manchester for 28 years. They have two daughters, Sara, 24, and Angela, 26, who graduated from Manchester High School.
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