Posted: 19-09-08 Fri 2:23 am
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
ANTI-VIOLENCE.
Early intervention is necessary to prevent youth violence. Elementary education training in anger management, impulse control, appreciation of diversity, and mediation and conflict resolution skills can help prevent youth from engaging in violence as they mature. Early discussions about the negative consequences of gang membership, and providing children with positive ways of getting personal needs met, can protect them from future gang recruitment efforts. Educating young children about the use of guns is also valuable, since accidents have happened as a result of children's naivete about their danger.
Age-appropriate training in self-esteem development
and stress management and reduction, especially for students living in poverty or in difficult family circumstances, can help transform negative feelings into positive coping skills. Other types of training, introduced to students at later developmental stages, covers development of "refusal skills" to help youth resist using substances and engaging in sexual activity, and how to prevent date violence, with particular attention to battering during teenage pregnancy.
Some schools have a specially trained safety coordinator or a committee whose primary function is to coordinate anti-violence programs and to respond to crisis situations by offering counseling and mediation. Schools may also have crisis centers, which are staffed places where students who commit or threaten an act of violence can go to receive on-the-spot counseling and to "cool off."
Other types of programs take a positive approach to violence prevention by offering incentives for good behavior, such as a recognition and reward system for good school citizenship. The goal is to bring about a change in the students and school climate so that normative behavior is constructive.
ANTI-GANG.
Even more than violence prevention in general, effective anti-gang strategies involve all school operations and staff. They require establishment of a positive school climate, good communications and security, a staff trained in crisis intervention, and a coordinated effort. They also require that schools not only acknowledge a gang presence, but that they actively investigate its extent and accurately determine who the members are, what they do, and where they congregate. Finally, good strategies require schools to acknowledge that preventing, and even reducing, gang activity will be a protracted trial-and-error process during which many different tactics are employed.
A first step is often establishing and widely publicizing the philosophy that a gang presence (clothing and paraphernalia, as well as behavior) will not be tolerated. Policies that flow from the philosophy include a dress code and prohibition on flashing gang signs, shouting gang slogans, and writing gang graffiti on school or personal property. Discipline measures, meted out consistently, which escalate with the number or severity of infractions, demonstrate school seriousness.
Schools make an extra effort to involve potential and active gang members in academic, extracurricular, and counseling programs. Providing gang members with effective educational supports, such as tutoring, can reconnect them with the rewards and value of academic achievement. Staff who takes a personal interest in individual members can help loosen the hold of the gang. By meeting informally with members and arranging for positive experiences that are probably otherwise lacking in their lives, staff can provide students with some of the affirmation that gangs offer. To do this, staff members may need to change their attitudes about gang members and take more time with certain students than they usually would.
Involving parents by providing them with information about their children's gang activity and its possible consequences, and counseling to help them deal with the problem, can enlist them as allies in the effort to rid the school of gangs. Schools can also provide access to outside agencies that offer counseling. As a last resort, gang members can be transferred to alternative schools for more intensive support.
ANTI-VIOLENCE.
Early intervention is necessary to prevent youth violence. Elementary education training in anger management, impulse control, appreciation of diversity, and mediation and conflict resolution skills can help prevent youth from engaging in violence as they mature. Early discussions about the negative consequences of gang membership, and providing children with positive ways of getting personal needs met, can protect them from future gang recruitment efforts. Educating young children about the use of guns is also valuable, since accidents have happened as a result of children's naivete about their danger.
Age-appropriate training in self-esteem development
and stress management and reduction, especially for students living in poverty or in difficult family circumstances, can help transform negative feelings into positive coping skills. Other types of training, introduced to students at later developmental stages, covers development of "refusal skills" to help youth resist using substances and engaging in sexual activity, and how to prevent date violence, with particular attention to battering during teenage pregnancy.
Some schools have a specially trained safety coordinator or a committee whose primary function is to coordinate anti-violence programs and to respond to crisis situations by offering counseling and mediation. Schools may also have crisis centers, which are staffed places where students who commit or threaten an act of violence can go to receive on-the-spot counseling and to "cool off."
Other types of programs take a positive approach to violence prevention by offering incentives for good behavior, such as a recognition and reward system for good school citizenship. The goal is to bring about a change in the students and school climate so that normative behavior is constructive.
ANTI-GANG.
Even more than violence prevention in general, effective anti-gang strategies involve all school operations and staff. They require establishment of a positive school climate, good communications and security, a staff trained in crisis intervention, and a coordinated effort. They also require that schools not only acknowledge a gang presence, but that they actively investigate its extent and accurately determine who the members are, what they do, and where they congregate. Finally, good strategies require schools to acknowledge that preventing, and even reducing, gang activity will be a protracted trial-and-error process during which many different tactics are employed.
A first step is often establishing and widely publicizing the philosophy that a gang presence (clothing and paraphernalia, as well as behavior) will not be tolerated. Policies that flow from the philosophy include a dress code and prohibition on flashing gang signs, shouting gang slogans, and writing gang graffiti on school or personal property. Discipline measures, meted out consistently, which escalate with the number or severity of infractions, demonstrate school seriousness.
Schools make an extra effort to involve potential and active gang members in academic, extracurricular, and counseling programs. Providing gang members with effective educational supports, such as tutoring, can reconnect them with the rewards and value of academic achievement. Staff who takes a personal interest in individual members can help loosen the hold of the gang. By meeting informally with members and arranging for positive experiences that are probably otherwise lacking in their lives, staff can provide students with some of the affirmation that gangs offer. To do this, staff members may need to change their attitudes about gang members and take more time with certain students than they usually would.
Involving parents by providing them with information about their children's gang activity and its possible consequences, and counseling to help them deal with the problem, can enlist them as allies in the effort to rid the school of gangs. Schools can also provide access to outside agencies that offer counseling. As a last resort, gang members can be transferred to alternative schools for more intensive support.
