As the Holiday break concludes and both parents and today’s youth embark on establishing a fresh routine for the rest of the semester, here are five helpful tips to facilitate a successful transition back to in-person learning now that the semester is underway!
Establish a routine: It is important to gradually reintroduce school routines including setting regular bedtimes, waking up earlier, and incorporating effective study habits.
Encourage organizaion: Encourage youth to organize their backpacks and supplies to ensure they have everything they need for the upcoming semester. In addition, develop a family schedule or calendar to track essential dates and major project deadlines. Prioritizing time to review the upcoming week, noting important dates, extracurricular activities and other commitments can help your family operate smoothly and help everyone manage their time more effectively.
Open communication: Encourage youth to engage in an environment that provides support, making them feel at ease to openly share any worries or anxieties regarding their return to school. Inquire about their chosen classes, social circles, and extracurricular involvement, and collaboratively address any concerns to ease the burden of stress.
Plan for your health: Ensure youth have nutritious meals and snacks to fuel their learning. To save time, plan and prepare meals in advance to avoid adding tasks to busy mornings. In addition to eating healthy, promote positive sleep habits. Establishing a consistent sleep schedule along with creating a nighttime routine can ensure youth are getting enough rest.
Encourage social connections: Returning to school is an opportunity for students to reconnect with friends and classmates. Encourage your student to engage in social activities and foster positive relationships.
At Safer Schools Together (SST), we recognize that each family, parent/caregiver, and student are unique, so we recommend you adapt these tips as you see fit for your individual needs.
Check out our complimentary resource guide Raising Digitally Responsible Youth to further support ongoing dialogues with today’s youth on how to stay safe on the internet, on social media, in video games and more.
To learn more, visit www.saferschoolstogether.com
While today’s youth encounter a range of holiday experiences, data suggests that these timeframes are not a positive experience for all young people, potentially leading to diverse effects on behavior and development.
For many students, school serves as a source of comfort, routine, and security. However, during the holidays, several challenges can arise that may include increased anxiety. These challenges often stem from changes in routine and increased isolation. The holiday season often acts as a predictable timeframe where Safer Schools Together (SST) notices an increase or shift in individuals’ behavioral baselines.
During these predictable timeframes, students who lack healthy connections to responsible adults may be vulnerable to negative influences, particularly those promoting worrisome online behavior. SST recognizes that increased screen time is a real concern for today’s youth and their online safety. Heightened online activity during predictable timeframes can lead to increased exposure to cyberbullying/bullying, online harassment, and exploitation.
These timeframes may also lead to experimentation with drugs or alcohol which often occurs due to boredom, peer pressure, or an attempt to escape mental health challenges.
Cyberbullying/Bullying, Online Harassment, Exploitation:
Cyberbullying has become increasingly prevalent due to the rapidly evolving nature of digital communication, especially among today’s youth. The validation of self-esteem, worth, and identity through online interactions may expose young people to the impact of cyberbullying on their mental well-being. SST has data that suggests there has been an increase in cyberbullying behavior among today’s youth.
Online harassment encompasses a broader spectrum of negative behaviors that go beyond the confines of bullying. It includes persistent, unwanted, and often malicious actions carried out through digital channels. Harassment can target individuals or groups based on various factors such as gender, race, religion, or personal beliefs.
The risk of exploitation can be heightened as individuals, particularly today’s youth, spend more time online. Exploitation can take various forms, including financial exploitation, sexual exploitation, or the manipulation of personal information for nefarious purposes.
Mental Health Challenges, Isolation, Loneliness, Anxiety, Depression:
Mental health challenges may escalate/evolve during predictable timeframes, particularly for youth disconnected from school activities. Isolation is a significant contributing factor to the exacerbation of mental health challenges. Individuals who experience isolation often lack meaningful social connections, which are crucial for emotional support and a sense of belonging. This isolation can be particularly pronounced during predictable timeframes, such as school breaks, holidays, or other times when regular social activities may be disrupted.
Additionally, predictable timeframes can lead to heightened anxiety levels. For youth disconnected from school activities during breaks, the lack of routine and social interactions may contribute to increased feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and depression.
Ensuring Digital Privacy:
Why do we overshare? Social media platforms are designed to facilitate the sharing of information and experiences. It’s easy to post a status update, a photo, an event, or a “check-in” with the click of a button.
During holidays, the frequency of oversharing tends to increase. Many individuals feel compelled to share their travel plans, experiences, or holiday festivities on social media. While this can be a way to connect with friends and family, it also raises concerns about the potential risks associated with sharing too much information, particularly regarding one’s whereabouts.
To mitigate potential security risks, individuals should adopt a mindful approach to social media sharing. This includes being selective about the information shared, adjusting privacy settings to control the audience for each post, and refraining from posting real-time updates about travel plans.
SST is committed to educating students, staff, parents/caregivers, and communities about online safety. Open dialogues between parents/caregivers or trusted adults and youth are crucial for addressing these issues. Positive adult role models in the community can significantly impact high-risk vulnerable youth through early identification and intervention. Encouraging youth to engage in sports, activities, school programs, and educational activities during predictable timeframes can help maintain routines and create positive environments. It is crucial to recognize the signs of mental health issues and implement strategies to address and prevent their escalation. Providing support systems, both within and outside educational settings, can help mitigate the impact of predictable timeframes. The collaboration of parents, schools, and community organizations in addressing these concerns and providing resources during predictable timeframes can have a substantial impact on young people.
SST has developed a complimentary resource guide designed to help introduce the major social media platforms, video games, and relevant trends that are either being used already or have the potential to be used by today’s youth: Raising Digitally Responsible Youth: A Parent’s Guide
To learn more, visit www.saferschoolstogether.com
Many of you have reached out to ask if we have age-appropriate resources for supporting students regarding the crisis in Ukraine. The resources below provide tips for teachers and parents that we hope are helpful for your schools.
How to Talk to Kids About Violence, Crime, and War: Common Sense Media gathers tips and conversation starters to help you talk to kids of different ages about the toughest topics.
Resilience in a time of war: Tips for parents and teachers of elementary school children: This article from the American Psychological Association can help adults guide their young children beyond fear and to resilience.
Resilience in a time of war: Tips for parents and teachers of middle school children: The American Psychological Association breaks out tips and strategies for parents and teachers of middle school-aged children.
National Child Traumatic Stress Network provides resources that can be filtered by topic or keyword and by audience with a focus on how adults can identify traumatic responses in young people and how to support them.
Trauma-informed practice is an essential element of many of Safer Schools Together’s professional training sessions. Please reach out to [email protected] if you would like to schedule a session for your school community.
UPDATE: Registrations for these sessions are now closed!
In light of the current Lower Mainland gang conflict and its impact across the province, SST will be offering complimentary sessions for: Students, Staff (Educators & Law Enforcement), and Parents
Photo courtesy of @cottonbro
As the COVID-19 pandemic and physical distancing measures continue, our Safer Schools Together (SST) Threat Analysts have noticed an increase in students using covert language to communicate suicidal intentions, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns.
“Our youth have taken to social media to remain social at a time where we have been forced to physically distance,” says SST Trainer and Senior Threat Analyst Nick Chernoff. “It’s important for parents, educators, and law enforcement who support student safety to pay attention to what youth are posting online, especially because the majority of our social interactions have moved online.”
Although students have always had their secret language to express thoughts and feelings on social media, we’ve noticed a resurgence in this online trend and new accompanying vocabulary. We first saw a drastic increase in covert language with the use of the hashtag, #mysecretfamily. With this trend, youth were posting about family members Ana (girls) or Rex (boys) to speak about their struggles with anorexia, family members Sue (girls) or Dallas (boys) if they were struggling with suicidal ideation, and other names that corresponded with various mental health struggles.
Students use secret language to share mental health struggles. Please be warned, if you decide to search the internet for secret language terminology, you may come across triggering content.
Now we are seeing students posting about wanting to become ‘unalive’ or ‘unal!ve’, using misspellings like ‘sewercide’, when they are struggling with depression and suicidal ideation. Seemingly innocent lines such as ‘I had pasta tonight’ and ‘I finished my shampoo and conditioner at the same time’ are often meant to be seen as a cry for help when posted on social media by teens and young adults. It is believed that the phrases are derived from Hannah Dains’ poem ‘Don’t Kill Yourself Today,’ which lists reasons why a suicidal person should choose to stay alive.
Hannah Dains
Students may use covert language as a subtle cry for help. They don’t necessarily want to come out and directly speak about the things they are going through so they use these codes to signal to their peers that they are struggling. Another reason for the use of secret language could be that certain social media platforms have censored posts containing hashtags such as #depression #suicide and even those that were once covert such as #Ana and #Sue.
According to Chernoff, the added stress of the pandemic is causing increased anxiety in youth, and it’s more important than ever to pay attention to the things they are posting online. “Take a few extra seconds when looking at a social media post to see if it has a hidden meaning, you may be surprised,” he says.
SST provides monthly (90-minute) remote learning sessions covering Current Behavioral Trends and Digital Updates. Sign up for a 1-year subscription.
Theresa Campbell, President and CEO of Safer Schools Together (SST) has won a Surrey Board of Trade, Women in Business award, in the category of Social Trailblazer.
Since 2012, SST has been helping schools and law enforcement professionals throughout North America minimize and manage their risks of student violence with reliable, professional training. “We make sure we’re available for law enforcement and school districts when they’re facing stressful situations,” says Campbell. “Most importantly for us, we’re able to demonstrate around the world the impact that our work can have on early intervention for young people on the pathway to violence. The work we do is already very rewarding. It’s just a bonus when it gets recognized.”
Campbell developed PSSTWorld, the first web-based anonymous reporting tool to encourage students to get personally involved in ensuring the safety and security of their school. She also developed Digital Threat Assessment training, which trains school safety teams to establish digital behavioural baselines for threat assessments.
Theresa Campbell with former VPD Chief Jim Chu
In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Frederic Milton Thrasher Award for superior service in gang prevention. The same year she was awarded the 2008 Solicitor General Crime Prevention and Community Safety Award of Excellence in recognition of her contribution and commitment to crime prevention and community safety.
Campbell is very involved in the community and has served on many boards and committees—liaising with various levels of government, police services, school districts, regional health and social services. She is currently an executive board member of Odd Squad, an organization founded by former VPD (Vancouver Police Department) members that design prevention and educational programs for youth.
In 2016, SST’s partnership with the B.C. Ministry of Education was honoured with the Premier’s award for work done on the Expect Respect and a Safe Education (ERASE) Bullying Strategy. ERASE is a multi-pronged bullying and violence prevention strategy program run by SST for the Ministry that brings together schools, students, teachers, police, Crown counsel and other community partners to prevent bullying and violence in B.C. schools.
Last year SST was also awarded the Surrey Board of Trade’s Corporate Social Responsibility Award at their Excellence Awards.
Mary Taylor