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Personal Safety 101
Learning to Be Safe and Avoid Violence
The Personal Safety 101 empowers participants by teaching actual versus perceived safety risks. Participants learn what an assailant is looking for and how to avoid being that target through awareness skills, body language, and using one’s voice.
The instructor addresses how socialization we receive and media images we absorb affect our perception of violence and our own capability to prevent it. The instructor normalizes the experience for participants who are survivors of violence, assuring them it was not their fault and that they can learn more tools to feel safe again. We show a video of our courses so that students can see someone who looks like them (size, gender, age, etc.) talking their way out of a bad situation and defending themselves. People simply cannot do what they don’t believe is possible, so it’s important to shift those expectations.
Students leave this class having more everyday safety tools as well as the knowledge that preventing and stopping violence is possible.
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The Roots of Violence
Exploring the connection between derogatory language, cultural expectations, and violence
Students will learn how socialization and stereotypes create violence that spans across gender, race, immigration status, etc. They will learn how derogatory language connects with more extreme acts of violence. They will explore ways they can be good advocates and bystanders by proactively helping stop low-level violence in order to prevent assault.
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Healthy Relationships
Promoting healthy relationships; preventing and understanding dating and family violence
This seminar examines the behaviors that constitute healthy and unhealthy, or abusive, relationships. Students learn to identify behaviors of an unhealthy relationship that occur early in the spectrum of domestic violence and how they are related to more extreme violence later. They identify when they, personally, would address the behavior and when they would stop dating the person. They also identify behaviors of a healthy relationship. The focus of this class intimate partner violence, but addresses healthy and unhealthy behavior in all relationships.
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What Would Provoke Me?
Exploring Our Reactions to Provocation and Their Consequences
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. Students will be able to identify the reasons different behaviors anger them, how they react, and possible consequences of those reactions.
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Intuition Development
Recognizing manipulative and assailant behavior
Students will be able to identify the signs of a manipulative or dangerous person by recognizing signals from the individual and their own internal reactions. They discover why the manipulation techniques are effective and how to avoid being drawn in.
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Technology and Safety For Teens: Bullying and Appropriate Intimacy
Applying “real world” morals and behavior to communication in new technologies
The current generation of teens and children has grown up with ubiquitous technology. Educators, however tech-saavy, are generally not prepared to understand the central role technology plays in youths’ social lives. Technology, such as texting and social networking sites, are therefore relatively un-regulated areas, as adults often do not even know what to make rules about. This seminar, which includes interactive activities, helps connect the “unreal” world of technology to the “real” world, where there are consequences, dangers, and standards of conduct.
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Redefining Consent on Campus
Shifting the idea of consent as the absence of the word “no” to the presence of the word “yes”
This workshop shifts the idea of consent from “not saying ‘no’” to saying “yes.” Instructors give examples of this principle in real-life scenarios and teach phasing so that participants are empowered with skills to ensure they have the fully consenting partner they want to have. As a result of the workshop, participants have improved self-reflection and self-awareness so that they are better able to actively, verbally stop a situation they do not want. The instructor also addresses the influence of alcohol or drugs on consent. Can be adapted to different ages and appropriate level of sexual intimacy per group (i.e. “kissing” for younger teens).
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A Multi-Media Approach to Choices
Analyze popular portrayals of boundary-setting, personal safety, or self-defense and identify them as choices
In this workshop, we 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 to differentiate between those representations and reality.
This workshop explores the range of legitimate and/or effective decisions that people can make to take care of themselves and others (i.e. avoiding a lifestyle that may be dangerous, leaving a bad situation and/or finding the right time to leave, seeking others’ help, directly telling someone that things need to change, deciding when something isn’t worth the physical danger or legal repercussions, and determining when physical defense would be appropriate.)
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.
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Bystander Education by Gender
Exploring practical ways to help others in everyday situations
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 instructor leads the group through scenarios in which they identify the various options for helping stop or mitigate the violence (relational, verbal, physical, or sexual) or the culture of violence as a bystander.
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Technology and Safety For Adults Helping Teens: Bullying and Appropriate Intimacy
Applying “real world” morals and behavior to communication in new technologies
The current generation of teens and children has grown up with ubiquitous technology. Educators and parents, however tech-saavy, are generally not prepared to understand the central role technology plays in teen’s social lives. Technology, such as texting and social networking sites, are therefore relatively un-regulated areas, as adults often do not even know what to make rules about. This seminar workshop explains what youth are doing and discusses what is appropriate for youth behavior surrounding technology. It addresses how to talk with kids about extending the same moral/ethical conduct in the “unreal” world of technology that they already use in their “real” lives. We translate common acronyms used in texting, give a how-to on controls for web browsers, teach how to navigate social networking sites, and how to help kids use aspects of social networking sites that are designed to keep them more anonymous and safe.
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The Response to The Undetected Rapist
Deconstructing the myth of a typical rapist and discuss real occurrences
70% of rape victims know their rapist. The majority of rapes occur without any or with limited physical coercion. This class’s purpose is to dispel the myth of rape being a stranger jumping out of the bushes and brutally raping and to replace it with an educated awareness of what rape is, who commits it, and how it is possible to avoid. The implications of drugs and alcohol use as it pertains to sexual assault are addressed in this class.
