Georgia Sassen

Areas of Expertise

Psychology; Education; Women’s Studies; Poetry

Email: gsassen@brandeis.edu

Current Project

Custom Percussion Poets, or “Drums and Poems,” helps at-risk girls to find their voices, connect with other girls and build literacy skills. They will use found objects as drums and create communal poems and raps based on the rhythms of each other’s drumming, building relationships as they make  poetry together.

Biography

Georgia’s work uses relational psychology to prevent mental health crises among at risk children, to work clinically with adults and to build excitement about learning at schools in poor neighborhoods.

Georgia applied relational theory to debunk the idea that women have “fear of success”  and developed the program “Taking Control of Our Work Lives” to build  girls’ awareness of work as an avenue for social change and increased personal freedom. After founding the nonprofit “Building Resilience in Kids,” Georgia  created “Art from the Heart” and “Write from the Heart,” programs for at-risk middle school girls. These programs helped girls discover connection with each other as a way to feel powerful, and as an alternative to violence as a way to get their way. Her teachers’ seminar, “Making Connections at School,” gives teachers tools for creating community in classrooms. Her workshop, “Girls on the Brink of Adolescence” has given birth to mothers’ groups that continue to support mothers of teens and has provided fathers with guidelines for helping their girls navigate early adolescence.

Georgia has been a faculty member at the Jean Baker Miller Institute of the Stone Center at Wellesley College, the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Clark University.

Education

Ph.D., University of Massachusetts

M.S., University of Massachusetts

Ed.M., Harvard University School of Education

Representative Publications

Sassen, Georgia, Spencer, R. and Curtin, P. “Art from the Heart: a relational-cultural approach to using art therapy in a group for middle school girls.” Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, (1) 2, 2006.

Sassen, Georgia. “Success anxiety in women: a constructivist theory of its source and  significance.” Harvard  Educational Review. February, 1980.

Links

Building Resilience in Kids