VIOLENCE AT SCHOOL: WHAT PARENTS CAN DO:

FIREARMS – Keep firearms locked and secured. The parent will be held legally responsible if a child gains access to the firearm and brings it to school.

SCHOOL INVOLVEMENT – Take an active role in your children’s schools. Talk with teachers and staff. Join or work with parent-teacher-student organizations. Volunteer in classrooms, library or other activities, before and after school.

ROLE MODEL – Be a positive role model. Settle your own conflicts peaceably and without violence. Manage your anger without violence and destructive behavior.

COMMUNICATE – Listen and talk with your children regularly to discover what they are thinking about concerning various topics. Make this a daily habit.

COMMUNICATE – And set in advance, clear limits on behaviors, punishments and rewards. And be consistent, which will help your children establish self-discipline, a skill they need and will use the rest of their lives.

COMMUNICATE – Discuss and explain violence (destructive acts against people and things), and that you won’t tolerate any violent behavior. Discuss and answer their concerns, ideas and questions.

TEACH – Your children and help them learn how to examine and find solutions to problems. If they know how to approach and resolve issues they will be less likely to become angry, frustrated, or violent. Use teachable moments to help children use and apply solutions that alternative to anger and violence.

DISCOURAGE – Name-calling and teasing, and other behaviors that may escalate into physical altercations or worse.

KNOW – Your children’s friends, whereabouts, and activities. It’s a parent’s right and responsibility. Make your home and inviting and pleasant place for your children and their friends; it’s easier to know what they are up to when they are around.

LEARN – How to spot signs of troubling behavior in kids—yours and others.

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.

SUPPORT – And make it clear to your children that you support school policies and rules that are in effect to create a safe school environment. Discuss with your children, policies and rules that they disagree with, feel are unnecessary, or tell you are not enforced. Discuss ways of working with the school, other students, and parents on making new policies or rules, making established policies and rules work better, or changing or doing away with ineffective policies or rules.

JOIN – Up with other parents through neighborhood associations, church, civic groups, youth activity groups, etc. Talk about violence problems, concerns about youth in your community, sources or programs that deal with strengthening and sharpening parenting skills and similar issues.

DEVELOP – Positive, alternative to violence, activities for youth in your community, i.e. sports activities or community service involvement.

SCHOOL VIOLENCE: WHAT STUDENTS CAN DO TO STOP IT!

WEAPONS – Don’t bring guns or any other weapon to school, refuse to carry or hide a weapon for someone else, refuse to keep silent about those who carry weapons to school.

REPORT – Any crime immediately to school officials or police. Report suspicious behavior or talk by other students to a teacher, counselor or other school official or police.

ANGER MANAGEMENT – Learn to manage your own anger effectively. Find out ways to settle arguments by talking it out, working it out through a third party—teacher, friend, etc., or walking away rather than fighting.

HELP – Others settle disputes peaceably. Start or join a peer mediation program or S.A.V.E. Club, in which trained students help classmates find ways to settle arguments without using their fists or weapons.

SET UP – A teen court, in which youths serve as judge, prosecutors, 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 in the process than in an adult-run juvenile justice system.

PEER COUNSELOR – Become a peer counselor, working with classmates who need support and help with problems.

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.

SCHOOL CRIME WATCH – Get with your School Resource Officer and/or school officials and incorporate a crime watch. Consider including a student patrol that helps keep and eye on corridors, parking lots, and groups, and develop a way for students to report concerns anonymously.

SCHOOL CRIME STOPPERS – Contact a representative from your local Crime Stoppers organization (or local law enforcement office) and develop a plan that will allow students to be rewarded for reporting crime and/or potential violence. Rewards could be monetary or the school could develop its own means of rewarding students.

CLUB INOLVEMENT – Become involved with school clubs or sports that keep you too busy to be involved in activities or at locations where violence is likely to occur.

CLUB ‘ANTI-VIOLENCE’ THEME – Ask each student activity or club to adopt an anti-violence theme. Have the school newspaper run how-to stories on violence prevention; the art club could illustrate the costs of violence. Career clubs could investigate how violence affects their occupational goals. Sports teams could address ways to reduce violence—strategies or game plans.

NEW STUDENTS – Welcome new students and help them feel at home in your school. Introduce them to other students. Each week, try to get to know at least one student unfamiliar to you.

PEACE PLEDGE – Start or sign up for a “peace pledge” campaign, in which students promise to settle disagreements without violence, promise to reject involvement with any weapon, and promise to work toward a safe campus. Try to get 100% participation.

COMMUNICATE – Listen and talk with your parents regularly to let them know what you are thinking about concerning various topics, including violence. Make this a daily habit.

RESOURCE: www.ncpc.org