The Role of Students

The majority of students recognize they share in the responsibility to prevent school violence. Not only do they suffer the consequences when it occurs but they also provide an essential perspective on how to promote school safety. Therefore, students should be included in all efforts to create safer schools. The following are steps students can take to help reduce violence in their schools.

• Report to teachers and administrators any threats or concerning information.
• Listen to friends who share upsetting thoughts or display troubling, harmful, or dangerous behavior, and encourage them to seek help from a parent or guardian, teacher, school counselor, or other trusted adult.
• Confide in a parent or guardian, teacher, or other trusted adult if they persistently feel so down, sad, or empty that they don’t want to go out and do things, are not able to sleep, have difficulty concentrating, feel helpless or angry, or feel like they are losing control over their thoughts or emotions.
• Immediately report suspicious behavior and threats of violence or suicide to a school official or another responsible adult. Students who do not feel comfortable speaking directly to school officials or adults should use another means, such as anonymous hotlines or notes.
• Help organize and participate in after-school activities with responsible members of the community. Encourage peers to do the same.
• Participate in ongoing activities that promote school safety. Actively participate in programs such as conflict resolution, problem solving teams, mentoring programs, peer courts, community service, and peer mediation.
• Act as positive role models for peers and younger students. Accept responsibility for their actions and consider the impact their actions have on others.
• Refrain from belittling, harassing, and bullying other students. Be tolerant of other students and their differences.
• Learn techniques to avoid and cope with negative peer pressure.
• Speak out and refuse to join in when members of groups or cliques with whom they are involved engage in negative behaviors toward others, such as acts of harassment or vandalism.

The Role of Parents and/or Guardians

Parents and/or guardians are an essential part of school violence prevention. Demonstrating an interest in their children’s lives is one of the most important steps parents and/or guardians can take to help prevent youth violence. Open communication between children and their parents or guardians is critical. Parents and/or guardians should be invited to help design and implement safety plans. Information and training sessions should be provided on school safety policies and programs. Parents and/or guardians should be informed of other steps they can take to contribute to a safe school environment.

Topics to Discuss with Children

• The school’s discipline policy. Parents and/or guardians should know the policy, communicate their support for it, discuss the reasons behind it, and expect their children to comply.
• Their own positive household rules, family values and traditions, behavior expectations, and the reasons behind them.
• Violence in television shows, video games, movies, and books. Talk about the impact of violence in the media and its real-life consequences.
• How to solve problems peacefully.
• Their children’s concerns about friends and other people who may be exhibiting threatening or violent behavior. Parents and/or guardians should share this information with the friends’ parents or guardians, a trusted adult at the school, or other appropriate authorities in a way that protects the confidentiality of their own children as needed and possible.
• Personal safety issues and appropriate responses to them.
• Their children’s day-to-day activities, accomplishments, concerns, and problems.

Actions Parents and/or Guardians Can Take with Children

• Model appropriate behaviors. Demonstrate healthy ways to express anger and relieve stress. Do not show anger in verbally or physically abusive ways.
• Watch their children carefully for any troubling behaviors. Parents and/or guardians should learn the warning signs for at-risk children and how to get help from school or community professionals.
• Take an active role in their children’s education. Visit and volunteer at their school, monitor their schoolwork, and get to know their teachers.
• Initiate or participate in violence prevention groups in their community, such as Communities that Care and Mothers Against Violence in America.
• Get to know their children’s friends and families. Establish a network to exchange information with other parents.
• Monitor and supervise their children’s reading material, television, video games, and music for inappropriately violent content.
• Monitor and supervise their children’s use of the Internet.
• Check a child’s bedroom and other rooms for signs of violence ideation.  
• If needed, attend anger management, parenting skill, or conflict resolution classes offered by the school or other organizations.
• Establish and consistently enforce household rules and reward positive behavior.
• Provide quality child care for their children.
• Promote a healthy and safe lifestyle by prohibiting the illegal or irresponsible use of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs in their home.  
• Monitor and supervise their children’s whereabouts (where they are, how they can be reached, and how to reach their children’s friends’ parents). Encourage and facilitate their association with friends who seem to reinforce good behavior. Make their home a place where children and their well-behaved friends are welcome, comfortable, adequately supervised, and safe.

Ways Parents and/or Guardians Can Supervise Children’s Use of the Internet

• Consider placing computers in locations where parents and/or guardians can observe what their children are seeing.
• Establish family rules for Internet use and inform children that their use of it will be monitored.
• Use filtering or blocking software to restrict their children’s access to inappropriate material.
• Search their home computer files to see what sites their children have visited.
• Look for signs that their children may be involved with online criminal activity or be interacting with potentially dangerous people.
• If training is needed, attend classes.
• If training classes are not available, ask school administrators, law enforcement, or the local parent-teacher association to consider offering them. Resources are available through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s NetSmartz Program at www.netsmartz.org.

International Association of Chiefs of Police

Guide for Preventing and Responding to School Violence

Pg. 12 - 14