Programs| “The biggest failure is that by and large people have never told the youth of America that we believe in them, and that’s what programs need to do. If you want to be successful, you can’t just spew out information to kids and expect them to embrace a concept and live by it. You need to give students the core fundamentals of empowerment by telling them that we believe that they can make good and healthy choices, not just for one day, for one week, not just until they graduate from a specific program, but that they can learn to make good healthy choices over the course of a lifetime.” - Dr. Nanci Coppola, Director of Curriculum and Programs |
Classroom Component:
The Healthy Respect program illustrates the power and delicacy of the human reproductive faculties by employing highly trained male/female instructor teams to present 21 interactive lessons that challenge and encourage young people to adopt abstinence until marriage as a lifestyle that is both desirable and achievable. The instructors are hired, trained and evaluated by Healthy Respect staff and work in close collaboration with teachers on site in the classroom. Student progress is monitored and measured by confidential pre-and post course surveys, by examinations, by homework assignments, and through focus group interviews. Long-range tracking strategy is in place to monitor students’ attitudes and behavior throughout a 3-year period.
The themes of Healthy Respect include Do NO Harm (to yourself, others and your future), abstinence until marriage, adoption as a viable best choice for an unmarried pregnant teen, and the importance of finishing high school and seeking higher education.
Topics covered include:
| Healthy Respect Student Topics | |
| Communication Skills | Sexually Transmitted Diseases |
| Human Growth & Development | Emotional Health & Character Formation |
| Sexual Health & Behavior | Family Life & Relationships |
| Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs | Media & Society |
Parent / Guardian Workshops:
Parents / Guardians are recognized as the primary educators of children in the area of human sexuality. Classroom instruction is reinforced through a family component that includes Parent Newsletters, Got Teens? Get Help! Parent Workshops, Ask Your Parents homework, and Parent Communication Workshops.
Parent Newsletters: These newsletters alert parents to Healthy Respect program events and topics being covered in the classroom and After-School Program.
Got Teens? Get Help! Parent Workshops: These workshops provide an educational forum for parents to learn about sexually transmitted infections to encourage and equip parents to talk to their teenagers about sex, relationships, and abstinence until marriage. Parents / Guardians are exposed to the curriculum that students receive in the classroom component of the program.
Parent Communication Workshops: These workshops open the dialogue between parents/ guardians and children to ensure that the parent understands his/her role as the primary sexuality educator for their children. Parents learn important skills such as: improving parent-child communication, helping their children to resist peer pressure, learning the importance of when and how to talk to their children, and countering the influence of media messages.
Ask Your Parent Homework: Homework is sent home
so parents / guardians and students can communicate regularly about
important topics such as educational goals, family values, teen pregnancy,
communication and sexually transmitted infections and diseases.
Peer Educator Program: High school students who have completed at least one year of the classroom component of Healthy Respect receive 20 hours of training as Peer Educators. Working in teams they assist the Healthy Respect instructors in delivering the after-school program to middle school students.
After-School Programs: The Healthy Respect program offers 20 hours of safe after-school programming supervised by our instructors and school personnel. Ten hours of programming time is spent with Peer Educators who deliver the Healthy Respect message in a very interactive and casual format. Ballroom Dance workshops, conducted by professional dancers, are used to teach young people to appropriately interact with each other in public and give them an alternative to the sexualized dancing that they see on most music videos. In media workshops students write and produce their own commercials incorporating the themes of the Healthy Respect curriculum.