Click on a class or seminar below for more information
Personal Safety 101 For Everyone. This gives a community the basics about personal safety. Middle and high school students, teachers and parents benefit from having a common language to address safety concerns. Includes:
Personal Safety 101 teaches what an assailant is looking for and how to avoid being that target by teaching awareness skills, body language, and using one’s voice to prevent or stop an assault. We address how our socialization and media images affect how we react in threatening or dangerous situations. Students have an opportunity to question safety information they have received in the past to discover whether it is relevant or effective. We show a video of our courses so that people can see what we do in our experiential classes, but also so that students can see someone who looks like them (size, gender, age, etc.) talking their way out of a bad situation/defending/taking care of themselves. People can’t do what they don’t believe is possible, so it’s important to shift those expectations.
Technology & Safety. Teachers and parents see the repercussions from incidents originating on social networking sites or from messages that are forwarded instantly via cell phones and email. Bullying and intimacy that previous generations might have experienced only face-to-face often occur through technology today. Parents and educators, however tech-saavy, often do not know how to teach teens appropriate technology use or what to make rules about. This package is designed to reach an entire grade level, for grades 7-12. Includes:
This seminar includes interactive activities which help connect the “unreal” world of technology to the “real” world. We explore the consequences of using these very public and seemingly – but not actually –anonymous media, which may affect the emotional health of others (by cyber-bullying), one’s reputation among peers (by posted pictures, sexting), or employers or colleges impressions (by “updates”.)
Roots of Violence. This seminar is great for addressing bullying at its roots. It helps students understand why it matters that they use certain words when talking about/to others, and helps them understand the relationship between the bullying or cruelty that they experience and what others experience. This package is designed to reach an entire grade level, for grades 9-12. Includes:
•The Roots of Violence Seminar.
People are assaulted differently based on the way that they are perceived. These perceptions are based on cultural legacies around factors like gender, race, and class. These perceptions are perpetuated by images in the media and the increasingly commonplace use of derogatory language. Participants in this seminar identify how the use of this kind of language serves to socialize the behavior of the group or culture they belong to and how this socialization limits personal expression and encourages the continuation of institutional oppression. This seminar explores the link between casual use of derogatory language and hate-crimes like gay-bashing or domestic violence.
Anti-Bullying. This class is for the entire school: the “bully,” the “bullied,” and the “bystander.” When people feel empowered personally, they are much less likely to need to feel power over others. When former victims understand why violence happens in addition to exploring their own power, they will be able to better stand up for themselves. When individuals felt victimized or disempowered when witnessing bullying happening to someone else understand the dynamics they witnessed and have communication and confrontation skills, they are much more likely to speak up for their peers instead of ignoring the uncomfortable situation. Includes:
•Personal Safety 101 Seminar
Personal Safety 101 teaches what an assailant is looking for and how to avoid being that target by teaching awareness skills, body language, and using one’s voice to prevent or stop an assault. We address how our socialization and media images affect how we react in threatening or dangerous situations. Students have an opportunity to question safety information they have received in the past to discover whether it is relevant or effective.
•The Roots of Violence Seminar
People are assaulted differently based on the way that they are perceived. These perceptions are based on cultural legacies around factors like gender, race, and class. These perceptions are perpetuated by images in the media and the increasingly commonplace use of derogatory language. Participants in this seminar identify how the use of this kind of language serves to socialize the behavior of the group or culture they belong to and how this socialization limits personal expression and encourages the continuation of institutional oppression. This seminar explores the link between casual use of derogatory language and hate-crimes like gay-bashing or domestic violence.
•Bystander Education by Gender
The goal is of this class is to create mentors in communities like high schools, who generate positive peer pressure for discontinuing violence, intimidating or disrespectful behavior, as well as cultivate empathy for victims/survivors. The class is divided by gender.
The curriculum for boys is based on the work of Jackson Katz, an activist and educator who identifies violence against women as a “men’s issue,” because men are almost always either the perpetrators or well positioned to intervene. After identifying what gender violence is, especially the manifestations that may be thought socially acceptable, the instructor leads the group through scenarios in which they identify the various options for helping stop or mitigate the violence or the culture of violence as a bystander.
When girls are bullied, they tend to experience social aggression. One of the many problems with dealing with social aggression is that it is difficult to confront “the bully.” Often the leader has manipulated her peers to participate with her in the ignoring, mocking, etc. In this class, girls discover ways in which they participate in bullying behavior and how they actively stop the bullying instead of passively participating.
•“What Would Provoke Me?” Seminar
While asserting boundaries is important, many people may react to provocations in a way that gets them in legal trouble, trouble at school, or puts them in physical danger. Others may not be aware that they have a right to stand up for their boundaries. In this seminar, participants study situations that provoke violence (deliberate rudeness, insults to self or loved ones, direct challenges) and consider how s/he has or would react to those situations personally.
We discuss how anger, vengeance or a sense of justice can fuel reactions to these situations. We also talk about potentially negative consequences: escalating a situation, getting hurt or into trouble at school or legally because of an aggressive reaction, or social stigma for not standing up for yourself. We explore the different ways to react and how it may make us feel, how it may affect the situation, and possible big picture outcomes. We discuss how socialization can factor into the reactions we choose and how to make the best choice personally.
•Technology and Safety Seminar
This seminar includes interactive activities which help connect the “unreal” world of technology to the “real” world. We explore the consequences of using these very public and seemingly – but not actually –anonymous media, which may affect the emotional health of others (by cyber-bullying), one’s reputation among peers (by posted pictures, sexting), or employers or colleges impressions (by “updates”.)
•Intuition Development Seminar
Physical and sexual assaults are perpetrated most often through manipulation and coercion rather than through physical force or physical force alone. In this seminar, students identify and analyze manipulative behaviors. They discover why the manipulation techniques are effective and how to avoid being drawn in. Intuition, the semi-conscious part of the brain that stores more information than the conscious part, often sends signals when someone is manipulating us. In this seminar we explore how the intuition sends us messages and how to deconstruct and use those messages most effectively.
Participants analyze popular images (newsprint, TV, songs, movies, etc) that portray boundary-setting, personal safety, or self-defense to understand the perspective and bias of the media and to better understand the factors of the incidents themselves. We use the media as a tool to identify the choices we have to make around interpersonal relationships.
Participants gain an expanded sense of how to deal with dangerous or complicated situations. They come to see that by making smaller decisions early on, they can avoid increasingly uncomfortable or dangerous situations later. Participants often feel safer by learning that the media usually portrays the most extreme cases of violence, and that they already have skills to avoid the most common situations.
•5-12-Hour Verbal & Physical Experiential Workshop
Awareness & avoidance skills; verbal de-escalation and dissuasion techniques; boundary setting skills with people we know; physical skills for a face-to-face confrontation. A longer workshop includes defense against predatory attacks (attacks from behind) that are associated with physical bullying Longer sessions allows for more physical skills that not only may save their lives, but also tends to make students’ verbal skills and body language stronger simply because they know that they can take care of themselves if the situation worsened. This experiential workshop helps people who bully, who often experience bullying themselves, feel personally empowered; it helps the bullied feel able to stand up for themselves appropriately; it helps bystanders feel able to help by removing barriers associated with fear or retaliation or simple not knowing options for helping.
IMPACT Semester Class. This is the complete IMPACT class. It includes everything we teach, with the opportunity to go more in-depth in discussion, through assignments, and by cultivating group support. The experiential portions of the class include extensive practice of verbal and physical skills.
•Seminar classes addresses issues including:
Intuition development & recognizing manipulative behavior; personal boundaries in relationships; preventing and understanding dating and family violence, as well as understanding healthy relationships; learning what would provoke us personally and what the consequences of our reactions might be; where violence comes from and how we individually can be a part of changing culturally fuelled violence; using technology appropriately and safely; media literacy about portrayals of boundary-setting or self-defense; understanding consent as the presence of the word “yes” instead of the absence of the word “no;” etc.
•Experiential Course covering:
Awareness & avoidance skills; verbal de-escalation and dissuasion techniques; boundary setting skills with people we know; boundary setting in intimate situations; physical skills for a face-to-face confrontation, predatory attacks (attacks from behind), situations that go down to the ground (ground fighting), or start off in a bed.
