The 2022 Family Life Education Summit is scheduled for Friday, June 24, 2022. This will be a virtual event to focus solely on family practitioners at all experience levels working with and for families.

The summit will be approved for 14 contact hours of continuing education credit.

Keynote Address

Evolving Best Practices in Family Life Education amid the Pandemic’s New Normal

Judith A. Myers-Walls, Ph.D., CFLE Emeritus

Professor Emerita, Human Development and Family Studies, Purdue University
Education Director, OnlineParentingPrograms.com

Beginning in February and March of 2020, the world changed. A virus entered the health scene and changed the way the world functioned, and those changes in turn influenced Family Life Education and educators. More than two years later, some routines are returning to a semblance of “normal,” but it is a new normal. How have the events of 2020-2021 and beyond shaped the expectations and practices of families, Family Life Educators, and the environment in which we do our work? This presentation will look at the roles of grief and resilience as processes both to be used by the educators themselves and to be applied in educational settings with families. The impact of grief and disruption on conflict and polarization will also be addressed. Participants will be encouraged to list pandemic-related losses they are glad to see being restored and those that they hope will be gone permanently. They also will be asked to identify adaptations for the pandemic that they hope to continue and those that they hope to eliminate.

About the Presenter

Judith A. Myers-Walls, Ph.D., CFLE, has a doctorate in child development from Purdue University. She went on to be a faculty member at Purdue in human development and family studies for 31 years, working with Cooperative Extension and teaching in and outside the classroom. Her teaching interests and writing and research pursuits include Family Life Education and educational program delivery strategies, cultural contexts of families and parents, talking to children about difficult topics, online education for at-risk families—especially related to divorce/separation or abuse/neglect, and peace education for families.

In the academic department at Purdue, her responsibilities were to teach courses on children and parenting, advise students, and conduct research. Her extension appointment was to translate research findings in the area of human development for use by the general public.  More specifically, she trained other professionals (especially county extension staff) involved in programming for children, parents, and families; wrote pamphlets; delivered workshops; worked with mass media; developed curricula; reviewed materials; and supported Family Life Education in other ways.

Dr. Myers-Walls is an NCFR Fellow and the former editor of NCFR's Family Focus, a quarterly translational Family Science publication.