As we head into a new school year, our Youth Educator, Katrina, will be presenting to 9th graders and new students at Ithaca High School’s welcoming orientation. She will be letting them know about our agency services, as well as providing some programming around healthy versus unhealthy behaviors within both friendships and romantic connections.
Katrina will continue visiting Tompkins County schools throughout the year to share information about our agency services and to provide sexual and relationship violence prevention programs to youth, as well as some complementary training and information sessions for faculty and staff.
The Education Department would like to remind you that they have a variety of programming options available for classes, extracurricular student groups, and homeschoolers within Tompkins County. Our Youth Educator is primarily in contact with local health teachers, as our programs tend to fit well within their established curricula goals. However, we are happy to work with any educators, coaches, and/or other youth-serving professionals that feel our programming would be valuable for the youth they work with.
Some of our regular program offerings are listed below. Feel free to contact Katrina at kclark@actompkins.org with any programming or outreach material requests and/or questions! Programs are roughly 45 minutes long, but can vary depending on student engagement and may be modified depending on needs. The list below does not include all available programs, so please reach out if you are interested in learning more!
Relationship Violence (best suited for high school aged students): brainstorm various healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationship behaviors; explore power and control as elements of abusive relationships; debunk common myths and misconceptions about abuse
Digital Safety (best suited for high school aged students): understand how to exercise media literacy as it applies to pornography; explore connection between the normalization of an absence of communication in mainstream porn and how that may have harmful impacts on real-life sexual behaviors; consider other ways porn may influence expectations and beliefs in regards to sex, intimacy, relationships and social identities; clarify laws regarding sexting; define revenge porn and sextortion; identify safer sexting strategies for harm reduction
Child Sexual Abuse / Grooming (best-suited for 7th or 8th graders): define child sexual abuse and grooming; explore how Larry Nassar effectively groomed hundreds of young girls and women, as well as the greater USA Olympic Gymnastics community; identify ways sexual abusers build “trust” with those they are seeking to harm; watch Simone Biles share about her experience; consider how harm like this could have been, and can be, prevented
I Am Little Red by Linda Cabot (best suited for 6th or 7th graders): built off of, and continuously referring back to, the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, students define age-appropriate language related to child sexual trafficking; watch short animated film designed for the primary prevention of the commercial sexual exploitation of youth; identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited by others; describe the most common recruitment tactics used by traffickers; learn about support services, resources, and options if one is at risk of, or experiencing sex trafficking