Teen dating abuse and violence under the umbrella of domestic violence.
Students, teachers and parents need to be informed of the warning signs of teen domestic violence. Through our curriculum we hope to spread awareness about the issue of teen dating abuse and violence as well as providing resources to help prevent future trauma.
Our main audience for this curriculum is Sacramento teenagers between the ages of 13-18, but we heavily encourage school staff and parents to participate as well because it is not only crucial for teenagers to know the warning signs of teen dating abuse and violence as well as strategies to help prevent and identify such situations, but it is important for the staff at their school and parents to be educated on the topic as well so they can be an additional resource for the students.
Our curriculum on teen dating abuse and violence will be taught during a two hour assembly held at the high school. One contextual consideration to consider is the age differences among the high school students, so adjustments may need to be made to the curriculum in the way of separating students by age group to ensure the material is age appropriate for the students' developmental stage.
Our curriculum is based on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory to explain how the inherent qualities of teenagers and their environments interact to influence how they grow and develop. Our curriculum specifically focuses on the negative effects of a teenager’s exposure to violence in the home, school, and the community amongst their peer group with a special emphasis placed on the contributing influence of technology and soical media in relation to teen dating abuse and violence.
We are basing our curriculum on three research studies and reports that were conducted by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress in agreement with the Violence and Victimization Research Division of the National Institute of Justice, the U.S Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, and the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. We supplemented our research with the already established teen dating violence and abuse curriculums from Love Is Not Abuse and Break the Cycle. Our references are listed and linked on our Reference page.
We will assess the student's understanding of the material through the use of a pre- and post-survey and self-assessment. We will also gauge the student's knowledge through group discussions in our activities, follow-up questions asked throughout the group discussion by the instructor, as well as opening up the forum for students to ask questions so that we can provide clarification and evidence to further support our previous lessons and activities and dispel any misconceptions that the students may have about teen dating abuse and violence. We will measure our success by how well the students perform on their post-survey compared to their pre-survey, if they can answer our follow up questions during the activities and group discussions, and how they participate and engage in the group discussions with their fellow classmates and us.