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 In this lesson, you will learn:
"Gee, he was such a good kid. Nobody saw "this" coming." Probably a lot of people saw "this" coming but didn't want to suffer the consequences of a face-to-face confrontation. When a child does "this," with "this" being any serious violation of acceptable behavior, there are usually plenty of warning signs. It takes a confident parent to set curfews and zero tolerance polices. It takes a confident parent to listen to a litany of excuses and whining without backing down. In the long run, it is the confident parent who raises confident responsible children. Needless to say, it is possible to discipline and change the behavior of a two year old. When an undisciplined child reaches his teenage years, lenient parents find themselves with little power except to plead and compromise and hope.Lack of interest in school Absence of age-appropriate anger control skills Seeing self always as the victim Persistent disregard for or refusal to follow rules Cruelty to pets or other animals Artwork or writing that is bleak or violent or that depicts isolation or anger Talking constantly about weapons or violence Obsessions with things like violent games and TV shows Depression or sharp mood swings Bringing a weapon (any weapon) to school History of bullying Misplaced or unwarranted jealousy Involvement with or interest in gangs Self-isolation from family and friends Talking about bringing weapons to school
It takes real courage to walk away from a fight. Fights are not the answer to solving problems. Take a step back. Get the facts straight. Be willing to listen and don't be afraid to admit you might be wrong. Discuss ways to solve the problem. Always try to stay with a group of friends. Walk straight and tall as if you are not afraid. Say "No" and walk away. Don't Argue. Tell a trusted adult. Stealing is a crime. Report it to your teacher, a police officer or other trusted adult. Give details of what happened to the person to whom you are reporting the theft. Give names of other people who may have seen what happened. Let a trusted adult help you solve this problem. Remember that it takes courage to help a friend with a drug problem. Talk to your friend and try to help. Tell your friend about the dangers of drugs. Encourage your friend to talk to his or her parents or another trusted adult. Call for police, firefighters or emergency medics; dial 9-1-1 or call "O" for Operator. Describe the emergency briefly. Give your full name and the address at which help is needed. Hang up only when you are told to do so; listen for questions or instructions. 1. Recognize that keeping firearms in your home may put you at legal risk as well as expose you and your family to physical risk. In many states, parents can be held liable for their children's actions, including inappropriate use of firearms. If you do choose to keep firearms at home, ensure that they are securely locked, that ammunition is locked and stored separately, and that children know weapons are never to be touched without your express permission and supervision. 2. Take an active role in your children's schools. Talk regularly with teachers and staff. Volunteer in the classroom or library, or in after-school activities. Work with parent- teacher-student organizations. 3. Act as role models. Settle your own conflicts peaceably and manage anger without violence. 4. Listen to and talk with your children regularly. Find out what they're thinking on all kinds of topics. Create an opportunity for two-way conversation, which may mean forgoing judgments or pronouncements. This kind of communication should be a daily habit, not a reaction to crisis. 5. Set clear limits on behaviors in advance. Discuss punishments and rewards in advance, too. Disciplining with framework and consistency helps teach self- discipline, a skill your children can use for the rest of their lives. 6. Communicate clearly on the violence issue. Explain that you don't accept and won't tolerate violent behavior. Discuss what violence is and is not. Answer questions thoughtfully. Listen to children's ideas and concerns. They may bring up small problems that can easily be solved now, problems that could become worse if allowed to fester. 7. Help your children learn how to examine and find solutions to problems. Kids who know how to approach a problem and resolve it effectively are less likely to be angry, frustrated, or violent. Take advantage of "teachable moments" to help your child understand and apply these and other skills. 8. Discourage name-calling and teasing. These behaviors often escalate into fistfights (or worse). Whether the teaser is violent or not, the victim may see violence as the only way to stop it. 9. Insist on knowing your children's friends, whereabouts, and activities. It's your right. Make your home an inviting and pleasant place for your children and their friends; it's easier to know what they're up to when they're around. Know how to spot signs of troubling behavior in kids - yours and others. 10. Work with other parents to develop standards for school-related events, acceptable out-of-school activities and places, and required adult supervision. Support each other in enforcing these standards. 11. Make it clear that you support school policies and rules that help create and sustain a safe place for all students to learn. If your child feels a rule is wrong, discuss his or her reasons and what rule might work better. 12. Join up with other parents, through school and neighborhood associations, religious organizations, civic groups, and youth activity groups. Talk with each other about violence problems, concerns about youth in the community, sources of help to strengthen and sharpen parenting skills, and similar issues. Source: National Crime Prevention Council 1. Refuse to bring a weapon to school, refuse to carry a weapon for another, and refuse to keep silent about those who carry weapons. 2. Report any crime immediately to school authorities or police. 3. Report suspicious or worrisome behavior or talk by other students to a teacher or counselor at your school. You may save someone's life. 4. Learn how to manage your own anger effectively. Find out ways to settle arguments by talking it out, working it out, or walking away rather than fighting. 5. Help others settle disputes peaceably. Start or join a peer mediation program, in which trained students help classmates find ways to settle arguments without fists or weapons. 6. Set up a teen court, in which youths serve as judge, prosecutor, jury, and defense counsel. Courts can hear cases, make findings, and impose sentences, or they may establish sentences in cases where teens plead guilty. Teens feel more involved and respected in this process than in an adult-run juvenile justice system. 7. Become a peer counselor, working with classmates who need support and help with problems. 8. Mentor a younger student. As a role model and friend, you can make it easier for a younger person to adjust to school and ask for help. 9. Start a school crime watch. Consider including a student patrol that helps keep an eye on corridors, parking lots, and groups, and a way for students to report concerns anonymously. 10. Ask each student activity or club to adopt an anti-violence theme. The newspaper could run how-to stories on violence prevention; the art club could illustrate costs of violence. Career clubs could investigate how violence affects their occupational goals. Sports teams could address ways to reduce violence that's not part of the game plan. 11. Welcome new students and help them feel at home in your school. Introduce them to other students. Get to know at least one student unfamiliar to you each week. 12. Start or sign up for a "peace pledge" campaign, in which students promise to settle disagreements without violence, to reject weapons, and to work toward a safe campus for all. Try for 100% participation. Source: National Crime Prevention Council  1. Report to the principal as quickly as possible any threats, signs of or discussions of weapons, signs of gang activity, or other conditions that might invite or encourage violence. 2. With help from students, set norms for behavior in your classroom. Refuse to permit violence. Ask students to help set penalties and enforce the rules. 3. Regularly invite parents to talk with you about their children's progress and any concerns they have. Send home notes celebrating children's achievements. 4. Learn how to recognize the warning signs that a child might be headed for violence and know how to tap school resources to get appropriate help. 5. Encourage and sponsor student-led anti-violence activities and programs ranging from peer education to teen courts to mediation to mentoring to training. 6. Offer to serve on a team or committee to develop and implement a Safe School Plan, including how teachers should respond in emergencies. 7. Firmly and consistently but fairly enforce school policies that seek to reduce the risk of violence. Take responsibility for areas outside as well as inside your classroom. 8. Insist that students not resort to name-calling or teasing. Encourage them to demonstrate the respect they expect. Involve them in developing standards of acceptable behavior. 9. Teach with enthusiasm. Students engaged in work that is challenging, informative, and rewarding are less likely to get into trouble. 10. Learn and teach conflict resolution and anger management skills. Help your students practice applying them in everyday life. Discuss them in the context of what you teach. 11. Incorporate discussions on violence and its prevention into the subject matter you teach whenever possible. 12. Encourage students to report crimes or activities that make them suspicious. Source: National Crime Prevention Council 1. Get to know students in non-confrontational settings. Help them see you as a mentor, peacekeeper, and problem solver, not just as an enforcer. 2. Develop a formal memorandum of understanding with the school about handling complaints, criminal events, and other calls for service. Volunteer to serve on the school's Safe School planning team. 3. Offer to train teachers, staff, and students in personal safety. Work with students to help present these trainings. 4. Help students learn about the costs of violence to their community -- financial, social, and physical. Link them with others in the community who are affected by violence to help them understand its lasting impacts. 5. Provide accurate information about your state's juvenile and criminal justice systems and what happens to youth who are arrested because they've been involved in violence. Also explain the kinds of help available to young people who are in distress or who are victims of crime. 6. If you are qualified in crime prevention through environmental design offer to help school staff perform a security survey of the school building, identifying lighting needs, requirements for locks and other security devices, areas where physical changes to the building could increase safety, and needs for pruning or other landscaping changes. Share training opportunities through your department with school security personnel. 7. Work to include school administrators, staff, and students in existing prevention action against gang weapons, and other threats. 8. Consider starting a school resource officer program, in which a law enforcement officer is assigned to a school to work with the students, provide expertise to teachers on subjects in which they are qualified, help address school problems that can lead to violence, provide personal safety training for students, and the like. 9. Work with school attendance officers to identify truants and return them to school or to an alternate facility. 10. Develop links with parents through parent-teacher associations and other groups; educate them on violence prevention strategies and help them understand the importance of their support. 11. Work with community groups to put positive after-school activities in place throughout the community and for all ages. 12. Together with principals and parents, start safe corridor programs and block parent programs to make the trip to and from school less worrisome for students. Help with efforts to identify and eliminate neighborhood trouble spots; using community policing and problem-solving principles. Source: National Crime Prevention Council Fact: Over 90% of law enforcement officers believe that citizens should be able to purchase handguns for self-defense and sport. Source: National Association of Police Chiefs 1. Establish "zero tolerance" policies for weapons and violence. Spell out penalties in advance. Adopt the motto "If it's illegal outside school, it's illegal inside." Educate students, parents, and staff on policies and penalties. Include a way for students to report crime-related information that does not expose them to retaliation. 2. Establish a faculty-student-staff committee to develop a Safe School Plan. Invite law enforcement officers to be part of your team. Policies and procedures for both day-to- day operations and crisis handling should cover such subjects as identifying who belongs in the building, avoiding accidents and incidents in corridors and on school grounds, reporting weapons or concerns about them, working in partnership with police, following up to ensure that troubled students get help. 3. Work with juvenile justice authorities and law enforcement officers on how violence, threats, potentially violent situations, and other crimes will be handled. Meet regularly to review problems and concerns. Develop a memorandum of understanding with law enforcement on access to the school building, reporting of crimes, arrests, and other key issues. 4. Offer training in anger management, stress relief, mediation, and related violence prevention skills to staff and teachers. Help them identify ways to pass these skills along to students. Make sure students are getting training. 5. Involve every group within the school community - faculty, professional staff, custodial staff, students, and others - in setting up solutions to violence. Keep lines of communication open to all kinds of student groups and cliques. 6. Develop ways to make it easier for parents to be involved in the lives of their students. Provide lists of volunteer opportunities; ask parents to organize phone trees; hold events on weekends as well as weeknights. Offer childcare for younger children. 7. Work with community groups and law enforcement to create safe corridors for travel to and from school; even older students will stay home rather than face a bully or some other threat of violence. Help with efforts to identify and eliminate neighborhood trouble spots. 8. Reward good behavior. Acknowledging students who do the right thing, whether it's settling an argument without violence or helping another student or apologizing for bumping into someone helps raise the tone for the whole school. 9. Insist that your faculty and staff treat each other and students the way they want to be treated -- with respect, courtesy, and thoughtfulness. Be the chief role model. 10. Develop and sustain a network with health care, mental health, counseling, and social work resources in your community. Make sure that teachers, counselors, coaches, and other adults in the school know how to connect a needy student with available resources. 11. Ensure that students learn violence prevention techniques throughout their school experience. Don't make it a one-time thing. Infuse the training into an array of subjects. Draw from established, tested curricula whenever possible. 12. Consider establishing such policies as mandatory storage of outerwear in lockers (to reduce chances of weapons concealment), mesh or clear backpacks and duffle bags (to increase visibility of contraband); and limited entry access to the building (to reduce inappropriate visitors). Source: National Crime Prevention Council
1. Adopt a school. Help students, faculty, and staff to promote a sense of community in the school and with the larger community through involvement in a wide range of programs and activities. 2. Help to strengthen links between school services and the network of community services that can help students and families facing problems. 3. Join with school and law enforcement in creating and sustaining safe corridors for students traveling to and from school. Help with efforts to identify and eliminate neighborhood trouble spots. 4. Help students through such opportunities as job skills development, entrepreneurship opportunities, and internships. 5. Encourage employees to work with students in skills training, youth group leadership, mentoring, coaching, and similar one-to-one and small group activities. Make your facilities available for these activities when possible. 6. Provide anger management, stress relief, and conflict resolution training for your employees. They can help build an anti-violence climate at home, at school, and in the community. You might gain a more productive working environment, too! 7. Speak up in support of funding and effective implementation of programs and other resources that help schools develop an effective set of violence prevention strategies. 8. Offer your professional skills in educating students on costs and effects of violence in the community, including their school. Public health personnel, trauma specialists, defense and prosecuting attorneys, and judges are among those with important messages to deliver. 9. Help employees who are parents to meet with teachers by providing flexible hours or time off; encourage employee involvement in sponsoring or coaching students in school and after-school activities. 10. Develop an anti-violence competition, including speech, dance, painting, drawing, singing, instrumental music, acting, play-writing, and other creative arts. Get youth to help suggest prizes. Make it a community celebration. 11. Report crimes or suspicious activities to police immediately. Encourage employees and families to do the same. 12. Establish business policies that explicitly reject violent behavior by employees or others on the premises. Source: National Crime Prevention Council Just as you stay away from strangers on the street, be careful about strangers on the Internet. If anyone uses nasty language or mentions things that make you uncomfortable, don't respond and log off. Never give your real last name, address, or telephone number to anyone; if someone asks for this information, or for your password, don't respond. Log off and tell a trusted adult. Never agree to meet with someone you've talked with on the Internet without asking permission from your parents first. There are places on the NET which are for adults only; if you find yourself in an "adults-only" place, or anywhere you think you shouldn't be, leave! There are plenty of good "kid places" on the net. Source: University of Oklahoma Police Department Why is college life dangerous for many young people? There are few restrictions or curfews. There is access to alcohol. Students are young and inexperienced. They may be walking at night through dark streets and campuses. There may be limited police protection and security. Young people sometimes feel invincible. Dormitories may not be secure. 1. Thieves are looking for an opportunity...for easy prey. Leaving your valuables unattended even for a short time opens the opportunity window to the wily. Since there is so much public traffic through your campus students should not get too comfortable and forget that valuables, particularly small items, can easily be concealed and lifted. 2. An unlocked and unattended office area is an open invitation for anyone who might wish to take advantage of this situation for undue gain. Double check your lock on the way out. 3. Study in open areas around other people. An isolated, empty classroom might be quiet but it is not as safe and secure as a general area. 4. After you have locked your locker, give the lock a good tug to insure that it has caught then give the tumbler a spin. 5. If you must work late, let security personnel know where you are working. 6. Try to carry the minimum of cash and credit cards on your person. 7. Travel with friends. Avoid people on the street who you feel might present a problem. 8. Park in well-lit areas. Don't leave packages or items visible within the car, and double check those locks. 9. A strong and sturdy chain or anti-theft device, along with a good lock, should stop any bike thief. 10. Note the location of house phones and emergency call boxes and don't be afraid to use them if the need arises. 11. Let authorities know about suspicious individuals or activity. Report any and all crime. 12. No amount of property is as valuable as your life. Source: DePaul University Police Always keep the door(s) to your residence and the windows that are accessible from the outside locked. Never sleep in an unlocked room. Never put your name and address on key rings. If you lose your keys, report the loss immediately. Do not study in secluded areas, particularly alone. If you receive obscene or harassing telephone calls, or several calls with no one on the other end, notify the police. Keep a time and date record of the calls. If you find that your room has been entered, Don't go inside or touch anything! Call the police immediately. If you find an intruder inside your room, day or night, DO NOT try to apprehend them. They may be armed or may easily arm themselves with something in the room. Get out of the room and call the police. Avoid bringing large amounts of cash or other valuables to campus. Always keep items of value out of sight. Keep a record of serial numbers of computers, printers, televisions, CD players and other valuable possessions. If your wallet is lost or stolen, notify the three major credit reporting companies that your identification has been stolen. They can stop anyone from obtaining instant credit on your credit line. Equifax 1-800-525-6285, Experian 1-800-301-7195, Trans Union 1-800-680-7289. The potential for crime does exist, but by following the suggestions outlined here, you can substantially reduce the possibility that you, a friend, or a colleague might become the victim of a crime. Source: Boston University Police
Go partying with people you can rely on. Stick together, look out for each other and make sure everyone's safe. Especially watch out for friends who appear intoxicated. If a friend feels sick, don't leave him or her alone. If you feel sick, ask someone to look out for you. If a member of your group passes out, turn them on their side to prevent choking and call 911 immediately. Don't drink and drive. Before you go out, designate a non-drinking driver. Remember to buckle up! Watch out for your drink and never accept an open drink from someone you don't know. If you have to leave your drink for any time, ensure you leave it with someone responsible who will watch it to ensure it doesn't get spiked with one of the easily obtained "date-rape" drugs, such as GHB, Ketamine, or Rophynol. Source: Wellesley College Police
Know what you want sexually; set sexual limits; don't give mixed messages. Trust your "gut feeling" about situations to avoid. Be clear and responsible in your communications with others. Be forceful, firm, and assertive. Be aware of nonverbal clues that can alert you to a problem. In communicating your unwillingness to engage in an activity, reject the activity, not the person. Remember, silence is not consent. Don't assume the other person knows what you do or do not want. Use the buddy system - watch out for your friends. Don't lose control - alcohol and other drugs affect your judgment. Avoid secluded places at the beginning of relationships. Do not assume that, if you are with a friend or an acquaintance, nothing bad will happen. Devise an action plan in advance for what you will do if confronted with a situation of possible acquaintance rape. Remove yourself from the situation at the first sign that you are feeling controlled or unsafe. Become comfortable with the idea that you may have to be "rude," make noise, yell, etc. to remove yourself from a possible acquaintance rape situation. Don't worry about hurting the other person's feelings. Never go to a bar, party, or social event alone. Use the buddy system. Do not leave your friends. Get your own drink. Watch your drink being poured and do not leave it unattended. Don't drink from a large open container, like a punch bowl. Don't drink anything that has an unusual taste, especially a salty taste. Don't share drinks. Don't leave a party with someone you just met. Warn others about high-risk situations. Source: Syracuse University Police You and your children can be safe at school or college if you are aware, alert and prepared. Knowledge is power. It all begins with good parenting. Go to Lesson 71 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
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Master's Tip:
Contrary to the former first lady's admonition that it takes a village, it doesn't. It takes a diligent parent. Teachers, coaches, clergy and counselors can only play supporting roles. If the parents don't define reasonable boundaries for their children and then strictly enforce those boundaries, the children will be weak and vulnerable when faced with temptation and peer pressure.
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