You Can Help Prevent School Violence - More Personal Safety Videos on Harmony Square

According to a recent report from the National Center for Educational Statistics violence, including student violence against teachers, is on the rise in America's schools. Statistics show that early 7% of high schoolers stayed home because they felt unsafe at or on their way to school. The increase of violent school threats is breeding fear, anxiety and frustration for educators, children and parents.

The good news in all of this is that in many cases the school community can in fact do something to help prevent school violence. That’s what this program is all about—ways we can prevent school violence and help to keep our schools safe.

Violence is anything that hurts a person physically or emotionally. School violence refers to any act of violence that occurs within a school community. Both “threats of violence” and physical “acts of violence” create an unsettling and unsafe environment for everyone in a school community. Why does it happen? How can school violence be prevented? This program explores answers to those questions and seeks to help students understand the important role they play in preventing school violence.

Through live-action, true-to-life scenarios viewers will learn to identify potential problem behaviors and warning signs that can typically lead to violence. Viewers will recognize that an important way they can prevent school violence has to do with simply being aware of the people around you and being able to spot something that isn’t quite right before it escalates.

Students will come to understand the difference between a direct and indirect threat and how context of the threat determines how threats should be handled.

In addition, students will learn to identify behaviors that may be warning signs to potential violent actions and that whenever they feel threatened or unsafe that they have an obligation to report the incident to trusted adult within the school community.

Preventing school violence isn’t something that should be left to just the police and the government when there is so much that a school community can do together. Students will realize there is a link between violence and a person’s need to feel connected to someone in the school community. Learn what you can do as an educator and teach your students what they can do and start making your school safer today.


Learning Objectives:

• Students play an important role in helping to prevent school violence
• Violence is any behavior that hurts a person physically or emotionally
• Awareness of both “threats” of violence and “acts” of violence
• Identify behaviors that may be warning signs to potential violence
• Understand the difference between direct and indirect threats
• Realize the importance of feeling “connected” to someone in the school community
• Report behaviors or incidents that make you feel threatening or unsafe

School violence encompasses physical violence, including student-on-student fighting and corporal punishment; psychological violence, including verbal abuse; sexual violence, including rape and sexual harassment; many forms of bullying, including cyberbullying; and carrying weapons in school. It is widely held to have become a serious problem in recent decades in many countries, especially where weapons such as guns or knives are involved. It includes violence between school students as well as physical attacks by students on school staff.

A distinction is made between internalizing and externalizing behavior. Internalizing behaviors reflect withdrawal, inhibition, anxiety, and/or depression. Internalizing behavior has been found in some cases of youth violence although in some youth, depression is associated with substance abuse. Because they rarely act out, students with internalizing problems are often overlooked by school personnel. Externalizing behaviors refer to delinquent activities, aggression, and hyperactivity. Unlike internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors include, or are directly linked to, violent episodes. Violent behaviors such as punching and kicking are often learned from observing others. Just as externalizing behaviors are observed outside of school, such behaviors also observed in schools.