Healthy Respect Has Great Expectations
for New School Year

Welcome back!

The school year is under way, and Healthy Respect is heading back to the classroom with its proven abstinence education curriculum. We begin the school year with greater enthusiasm than ever because we know the message of abstinence is making a difference in so many young lives. Our professional classroom instructors and state-of-the-art evaluation methods both tell us that the Healthy Respect method is working and young people are responding.

The abstinence until marriage message that has captured the hearts and minds of so many young people is this: sex is not bad, sex is good. It’s so good, in fact, that it’s worth saving for a mature, committed relationship that will bring joy through the years. Teens who abstain don’t carry the heavy hearts of hooking up and breaking up, and they never have to worry about sexually transmitted infections or unintended pregnancies. They are free to set goals for life and pursue them with whole (not broken) hearts and healthy bodies and minds.

We tell it like it is, and young people hear, think and decide.

Our professional evaluators – social scientists from Queens College – tell us that their student surveys show significant changes in knowledge and attitudes regarding such topics as sexually transmitted infections, sexual activity, teen pregnancy, and alcohol, tobacco and drug use. In other words, Healthy Respect is making a difference.

This fall, our well-trained, male-female teaching teams will bring the positive Healthy Respect message to ninth and tenth graders in four Yonkers public high schools and one middle school in the Bronx. They will be building on the success of the past, and bringing our program to new levels of excellence. Over the summer, they worked diligently with our Healthy Respect administrators to identify areas in the curriculum and teaching methods that could be changed and improved, and they are anxious to take this new knowledge to the classroom.

The beginning of a new school year always brings with it a sense of hope and renewed energy, and we at Healthy Respect are definitely in the spirit. We work on the front lines of abstinence education, and are seeing a change – maybe slow and subtle, but a definite change – toward a greater respect for the value of teen abstinence. There is a greater acceptance of the message that abstinence until marriage should be the expected norm for young people as they head into adulthood.

Have a great fall semester! We will keep you posted on further developments from the front lines as the school year progresses.