Services for Schools
Children and teens are safer when everyone in a school community has a common language and understanding about what it means to be safe with people. The social-emotional skills necessary to prevent most bullying, violence, and abuse are also essential for success – at school and in life.
Kidpower services for schools include an engaging and effective K-12 curriculum that can be taught by educators and incorporated into their daily activities; extensive free resources in our online Library; long-distance consultation; and, in communities where we have instructors, workshops for educators, parents, and students. Our educational resources and workshops for parents, caregivers, and educators prepare adults to protect young people from harm and empower them with skills for taking charge of their own well being.
What skills do students learn?
We teach a broad range of ‘People Safety’ skills adapted to the age of our students. They include:
- Safety with feelings and words – how to protect yourself from hurting words, take charge of your emotional safety, and act safely and respectfully towards others.
- Being powerful to be safe – how to use your body and voice to prevent most trouble before it starts and to escape from danger.
- Safety with touch, teasing, and play – how to set boundaries with people you know.
- Getting help to be safe – how to make safety plans for everywhere you go and be persistent in getting help from busy adults
- Checking and Thinking First to be safe – how to check and think first before you change your plan about WHERE you are going, WHAT you are doing, and WHO you are with, including how to be safe with strangers
- Using People Safety everywhere you go- how to apply People Safety skills to different kinds of problems, including bullying, at school, at home, online, and out in the world
How are these skills taught?
The Kidpower program is highly recommended by educators, mental health experts, and public safety officials for being positive, effective, experiential, emotionally and physically safe, age-appropriate, and adapted for the life situations and abilities of different students. Instead of using fear to teach about danger, Kidpower makes it fun to be safe.
In order to learn how to take charge of their emotional and physical safety, young people need awareness, knowledge, and skills. Raising awareness and knowledge without practicing skills can increase anxiety – rehearsing what to do and how to do it effectively reduces worry and increases competence.
The Kidpower Positive Practice Teaching Method gives each student the opportunity to be successful in rehearsing how to prevent and solve problems with people using examples that are relevant to their lives.
What Educational Resources are Available?
Our K-12 curriculum uses cartoons and step by step practice directions to make teaching entertaining as well as educational:
- 15 People Safety Group Lessons: Teaching Children and Youth Ages 5-14 How to Be Safe With People
- 10 People Safety Assignments – includes permission to make copies for individual classrooms, youth groups, and families – English and Bi-Lingual English-Spanish editions available
- Safety Comics series for younger, older, and teen/young adult students – in English, Spanish, and Bi-lingual editions
Our Child Protection books provide advocacy, intervention, and personal safety strategies and skills for educators, parents, and other caring adults:
- The Kidpower Book for Caring Adults, the most comprehensive guide available about personal safety self-protection, confidence, and advocacy for y9ung people
- How to Teach Self-Protection and Confidence Skills to Young People:Kidpower Introductory Guide for Parents and Teachers – in English and in Spanish
- Bullying: What Adults Need to Know and Do to Keep Kids Safe
- Relationship Safety Skills Handbook to teach teens and adults how to be safe from interpersonal, dating, and domestic violence
- Kidpower Child Protection Advocates Training Workbook
- Safety for Kids on Their Way to School handout
- Kidpower Safety Tips for Parents and Caregivers handout
- Creating Positive Social Climates to Stop Bullying; Kidpower Tools for Adult Leaders
- Kidpower Child Protection Promise
- Kidpower Put Safety First Commitment
- 7 Kidpower Strategies for Keeping Your Child Safe – Video Series
- One Million Safer Kids video– See Kidpower In Action
- PuppetPower Videos – for Young Children with their Adults
- Protecting Youth Athletes from Abuse Videos – for Parents, Coaches, and Youth Sports Leaders
- Walk In Another’s Shoes video – Teens Speak Out About Bullying
Please consider joining us in September 2015 in celebrating International Child Protection Month to honor, inspire,and support adult leadership in keeping kids safe from harm and empowering them with skills for taking charge of their own well-being.
What workshops are available?
In communities where we have instructors, we offer a variety of workshops offering hands-on, relevant, and fun learning experiences:
Classroom and After-School Programs
Our classroom programs give students the opportunity to practice a wide range of social-emotional skills for staying safe from bullying, violence, and abuse in context that are age-appropriate, Classroom programs can be set up for grades K-12. Teachers are required to stay in the classroom and learn along with their students so they can continue to reinforce the Kidpower skills throughout the school year.
Training for Professionals
Training of Professionals workshops prepare teachers, counselors, social workers, law enforcement officials, health care workers, martial artists, youth group leaders and other professionals to integrate the Kidpower, Teenpower, and/or Fullpower Personal Safety Skills with their own programs and activities. Trainings can include illustrated curriculum with lesson plans and follow up support from Kidpower’s instructors.
Training for professionals can range from one two-hour workshop to two full days of training.
To fully implement the program, we have found it works well to schedule two 2-hour trainings, as well as follow up support for staff by phone or in the classroom.
Kidpower also offers afterschool programs, assembly programs, adapted workshops for individuals with special needs and specific life challenges, and workshops that include physical self-defense skills with a kick pad or full-force instructor.
If you cannot afford our fees, please discuss with us how Kidpower can, as a nonprofit organization, work with your school to apply for funding.
If you want an in-depth experience in how to use, promote, and teach child protection and personal safety skills, please consider signing up for our three-day Kidpower Skills for Child Protection Advocates Training Institu
For more information about our programs, email us or call (800) 467-6997 ext. 1#.
If you don’t have a Kidpower center close to your community, consider setting up a new one and training as an instructor. We also train teachers and other professionals to include People Safety Skills in their programs and schools so that people everywhere can learn how to protect their emotional and physical safety.