Grant helps Glenbard expand speaker series

Nearly 15 years after its debut, a speaker series in Glenbard High School District 87 received just what it needed to continue to grow and improve this summer: a $100,000 donation.

Along with the cash came a new name and a parade of monthly speakers who are some of the leading authors and experts on parenting.

The "Glenbard Parent Series: Navigating Healthy Families" will welcome its second speaker of the year when frequent talk show guest and author Michael Bradley visits at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, at Glenbard South High School, 23W200 Butterfield Road, Glen Ellyn.

"It revolves around issues and challenges of raising teens today," student and community projects Coordinator Gilda Ross said of the series. "It helps put us in a better place to be able to parent."

The Cebrin Goodman Center's donation will give the series enough money to continue its monthly programming for at least three years. Previously, the series rarely featured more than one speaker per school year.

"We're on a mission while we have this to invite every parent who sees a flier to come out and take advantage of the Goodman grant," she said. "It's really a community fair."

Bradley also spoke to Glenbard parents in September 2008.

In the audience that night was Bob Rettger, a parent who had been having trouble communicating with his daughter. He attended on the advice of his wife.

"It changed my life," said Rettger, who after the speech decided to get involved and is now the strategic planning chairman of the Glenbard Parent Series. "He very clearly was able to discuss and illustrate dysfunctional parenting skills a lot of us learned back in a simpler day."

Rettger said he and his daughter had reached an impasse and constantly were butting heads.

It was then that his wife suggested he attend Bradley's lecture.

"I was trying my hardest to be a good dad," he said. "But my message wasn't working. Bradley's message really resonated with me."

Rettger said his parenting approach has changed dramatically since then.

"The whole key to raising kids is getting family values passed down to the next generation," he said. "Without effective parenting skills, that's not going to happen."