Fifth-graders in New Canaan Public Schools starting this year are getting new lessons in personal safety—including “good touch versus bad touch” and going to trusted adults if “put in an unsafe or risky situation”—as part of an updated health curriculum, district officials say.
Two new lessons within personal safety, co-taught by a school counselor and health teacher, are “focused primarily around healthy relationships, building that foundation that we are looking for within personal safety that is aligned with the sexual assault and abuse prevention mandate,” Jonathan Adams, the district’s K-8 heath and physical education coordinator, told members of the Board of Education during a presentation (available here under “Health Update”) at their Dec. 4 meeting.
“It’s a two-part lesson and it starts with the people around me and it’s the individuals that they have that they have healthy relationships with, and they start building that circle out from the inner side to the closest relationships they have to maybe some people that are acquaintances,” Anderson said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
Answering a question posed by Board of Ed Vice Chair Penny Rashin, about how “stranger danger” school safety lessons cross into other lessons plans that touch on students protecting themselves—Anderson said they relate “in terms of their trust circle.”
“So it’s the same diagram but then it’s who are those adults in their life that they can actually go to within their circle or outside of that, too,” he said. “So knowing when being in a situation you may be describing, as well, they have those people they’re identifying with in order to actually confide in, as well, when maybe being put in an unsafe or risky situation. We encourage them to know, especially at the fifth-grade level—and really even at the middle school or high school level—to have those trusted adults that they can go to with confidence when being put in an unsafe or risky situation. And it’s really giving them that confidence and self-efficacy in order to do that. That is what we want them to do.”
The mandate to which Adams referred is known as “Erin’s Law.” Named for a sexual assault survivor and adopted by the state legislature three years ago, it calls for “age-appropriate educational materials” children K-through-12 regarding “child sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention” that may include skills to recognize child sexual abuse and assault, boundary violations and unwanted forms of touching and contact, ways offenders groom or desensitize victims, and strategies to promote disclosure, reduce self-blame, and mobilize bystanders.
Parents may opt their children out of the instruction, though feedback among the 40 to 50 parents in New Canaan who attended an overview of the updated fourth- and fifth-grade health curriculum, including the personal safety section, has shown that they feel it’s important,Adams said.
District officials included information on the Erin’s Law-prompted instruction in a letter for parents and “we encourage parents,” he said.
“We want them to be part of that educational experience,” he said. “We have had really great participation with it.”
Adams underscored more than once in addressing the Board of Ed that the school district actively has communicated its health curriculum to parents.
“We are just going to make this curriculum more transparent for parents,” he said. “So we really want to give them an opportunity. One of the things I said to parents at the fifth-grade presentation was that this isn’t work for just us alone. We need to work together on this. This is an important topic and we want your help within our work, too.”
The comments came during a wider overview of the NCPS health education curriculum. Part of that involves developing and improving “health literacy” among students, where they are able to “address their own health needs and the health of others,”Adams said, as well as “obtain and apply knowledge and skills to enhance their own health and the health of others.”
Adams said his presentation was a continuation of one delivered to the board last fall. He recognized several people for their support and collaboration, including Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. Jill Correnty, Director of Human Resources Gary Kass, the full Board of Ed, Saxe Assistant Principal Steve Bedard, NCHS Assistant Principal David Gusitsch, NCHS Athletic Director Jay Egan and two health teachers.
Lessons at the elementary level around human growth and development—“puberty class,” Adams said—also have changed somewhat. In a light moment that drew laughter from the room, Adams said: “You never actually think about when you are growing up that will one day teach a puberty class to fifth-grade students and then to parents and now to the Board of Ed. But dreams do come true.”
Regarding the personal safety lessons, Adams said their purpose in part is “ to further empower [students] and provide students with the necessary safety skills.”
“In these two lessons, we continue to build upon the interpersonal communications skills that we are building upon within the personal safety unit itself, and we identify in that lesson who their trusted adults are within their trusted circle,” he said.
“One of the primary components of a skills-based health education program is that it is … adaptable. And what I can tell you is that a lot of the concepts that … may be highlighted at some points throughout the year that we will see … can easily be intertwined and adapted through any of the skills that we are going to be teaching. So the concepts might change or the importance of those concepts may change throughout life, but we know that the skills are static and they stay there and they continue stay there.”
[Note: This article has been corrected with Jonathan Adams’s correct surname.]