BRATTLEBORO — It's that time of year again! A few yellow and red leaves are starting to come out, the air in the morning feels a bit cooler, and river swimming is squeezed in before it is too late; summer is slowly fading into fall, and students and teachers have returned to school for another year.
Schools are not only places where students are taught to think critically and gain necessary skills for the future. There, young people can face a slew of difficult issues: drama, hurtful gossip, cliques, slut-shaming, bullying, depression, self-harm, substance use, dating abuse, and other forms of personal distress that can impact their daily lives and, in turn, interrupt their education.
The personal and social battles that youth face often manifest in different ways in the classroom and during the school day.
Teachers and administrators face the enormous task of not only providing an education and safe learning environment for students, but also navigating and interacting with the personal challenges their students may be dealing with, both in and out of school.
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Many of these issues are linked to the mission at the Women's Freedom Center of ending sexual and domestic violence.
One focus of our work involves the WFC Youth Advocate spending time with students within the Windham County and southern Windsor County schools, teaching about issues related to teen dating violence, such as consent, boundaries, healthy relationships, harmful gender stereotyping, and rape culture.
Although schools can vary much in environment, size, location, and structure, the prominent issues that we hear about from both students and faculty are very much the same: slut-shaming, hurtful comments and bullying through the use of social media, self-harm in the form of cutting and eating disorders, the challenges of dress-code policies, unhealthy relationships, and disrespectful language, often of a sexual nature.
To help schools address these issues, the WFC Youth Advocate is available to do a number of different workshops, staff trainings, and longer-term groups with students at the elementary, middle-school, and high-school levels.
A recent interactive workshop with teenagers focused on the use of pop songs as a way to look at gender stereotypes, violence against women, and defining misogyny and how it manifests.
Another workshop that we run with high-school students is on consent, discussing the Vermont law on sexual assault, what consent means, and the use of substances in alcohol-facilitated rape.
With students of all ages, we often discuss gender boxes –what have we learned about masculinity and femininity, and how these stereotypes can be harmful by keeping everyone confined to rigid definitions of gender.
Students are challenged to think about the language they use around gender. They learn how what is often labeled as “joking” can have harmful impacts on their peers and contributes to normalizing a culture of homophobia and slut-shaming.
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Aside from one-time workshops, we also run several six-to-eight-week girls' groups at different schools. The topics range from coping skills and life stresses to talking about dating, healthy relationships, rape culture, harassment, and struggles with body image.
These groups give girls a chance to connect and open up with one another about the challenges they face.
Each year, we continue to expand our work with youth. We are also available to run trainings and discussions with faculty and parents.
If your school or community group is interested in learning more about the Youth Advocate work, please contact us at 802-257-7364.