Lockhart Elementary School teacher Joanne Saunders has worked tirelessly to help the students in her school take action to both prevent violence and bullying and to create kindness. We learned about Joanne’s great work in St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, through Not In Our School’s Facebook page.
We thought it would be wonderful to create an interchange between Lockhart School and Duveneck school in Palo Alto, CA, where Not In Our School (NIOS) activities have also been expanding. We were thrilled to hear the partnership has begun and continues.
Read how one school proactively is addressing ways to reduce youth violence. Their Facebook page tells the wonderful story of their efforts.
—Dr. Becki Cohn-Vargas, Not In Our School Director
By Joanne E. M. Saunders
CDC
By Dr. Becki Cohn-Vargas
Not In Our School Director
In a recent NIOT blog, we shared how student leaders from the Not In Our School anti-bullying campaign at Marshalltown High School in Iowa were the ones who spoke up and averted a school shooting. In this four-part series, we will explore the issues of school violence, show one elementary school's activities to stop school violence and offer a two-part exploration of the restorative justice model, a promising strategy for interrupting and ending cycles of violence.
Youth Violence
Adults distinguish between brutal teasing, bullying, fighting, and a school shooting, but all these behaviors are part of a continuum of youth violence. Behaviors on this continuum can easily escalate.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) considers youth violence a public health issue. In 2010, 4,828 young people ages 10 to 24 were victims of homicide—an average of 13 each day.