Curriculum
Positive Potential (Grades 6-8)
The Positive Potential program is a whole-child program for middle school students. The curriculum is designed to reduce or delay sexual behaviors, reduce other risky behaviors, including the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, and promote positive youth development among largely white rural communities. The three-year program consists of five 45 to 50-minute sessions per year, plus an end-of-the-year assembly designed to support existing health and physical education instruction.
The goals of Positive Potential are to:
Reduce the occurrence of sexual intercourse.
Reduce the occurrence of other risky behaviors, such as peer violence and the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.
Impact psychosocial factors related to positive youth development by focusing on positive school performance, parent-adolescent communication, positive goal orientation, positive attitudes, knowledge, and skills to enable risk reduction behaviors.
6th Grade: This five-lesson curriculum for younger middle schoolers covers resisting peer pressure, developing healthy relationships, and planning for a healthy and successful future.
7th Grade: With five lessons, this curriculum builds on Positive Potential 6th grade to give 7th graders more information and skills on how to avoid risky situations, how choices can impact the future, and how to reach goals.
8th Grade: Unstoppable is the final five-lesson curriculum in the Positive Potential series. After reviewing what was learned in 6th and 7th grade, 8th graders continue to refine problem-solving skills, build self-confidence, and develop refusal skills.
Love Notes
Love Notes builds skills and knowledge for healthy and successful relationships for romance, friends, family, school, and work. Love Notes empowers youth with skills needed to further their own personal development, to form and maintain healthy relationships, to make wise sexual decisions, and build their skill capacity to follow through with their intentions.
Overview
Love Notes is designed to be used by an educator for 9th-12th grade students. The goal of this program is to build models and confidence for healthy relationships, improve communication skills, build robust knowledge of dating violence prevention, and understand the benefits of making wise sexual choices and the benefits of sexual delaying. The curriculum is based on numerous principles:
Planning—for your future relationships, education, work and family – by learning more about yourself and acquiring relationship skills – by making clear sexual choices that will help you avoid risks – by learning the Success Sequence so you can follow your plan
Pacing—that is pacing your relationship involvements more slowly – so you can make wise decisions today—especially wise sexual decisions—that will give you more choices for the future
Preventing—anyone or anything (unintended pregnancy or an STI) from being a barrier to your personal vision
Curriculum
The program is delivered through an activity and media-based approach. In addition to the lesson delivered by an educator, the lively activities use real-life relationship scenarios that are LGBTQ inclusive. Love Notes incorporates popular music, music videos, film, stories, drawing, sculpting, and an anonymous question box. The program consists of 13 Lessons.
Content
The 13 lessons are broken into four sections: Knowing Myself, All About Healthy Relationships, Communication Skills for Healthy Relationships, and Sexual Decision-Making & Pregnancy Prevention. See below for a breakdown of lessons:
Section I: Knowing Myself
Lesson 1: Relationships Today
Lesson 2: Knowing Yourself
Lesson 3: My Expectations—My Future
Section II: All About Healthy Relationships
Lesson 4: Attractions and Starting Relationships
Lesson 5: Principles of Smart Relationships
Lesson 6: Is it a Healthy Relationship?
Lesson 7: Dangerous Love
Lesson 8: Decide, Don’t Slide—Low Risk Approach to Relationships
Section III: Communication Skills for Healthy Relationships
Lesson 9: What’s Communication Got to Do With It?
Lesson 10: Communication Challenges and More Skills
Section IV: Sexual Decision-Making & Pregnancy Prevention
Lesson 11: Let’s Talk About Sex
Lesson 12: Pregnancy, STIs and HIV
Lesson 13: Through the Eyes of a Child
Relationship Smarts
Using an interactive approach, this evidence-based program promotes abstinence by showing students how to focus on their strengths and goals, set personal limits and meet challenges to those limits and use technology as a positive tool.
Overview
Relationship Smarts is designed to be used with younger teens. The goal of this program is to build assets and strengthen protective factors by empowering youth to focus on their aspirations and boost confidence. Using a fun, interactive approach, Relationship Smarts shows students how to set personal goals, identifying their own strengths and weaknesses, understanding how their past and family relationships influence the present and the challenges associated with both romantic relationships and friendships. The curriculum also includes activities for students to do with their families or a trusted adult. The curriculum is based on numerous principles:
Students have attractions, emotions and desires for a healthy relationship.
Students must understand themselves before engaging in a relationship.
Students need to have a vision for their future.
Students need skills to reduce risky decisions and behaviors
Not having sex is the healthiest sexual limit for students in middle school.
Students can set sexual limits.
Students can be motivated to maintain their limits.
Students will encounter challenges to maintain their limits.
Students can overcome challenges to their limits.
Students can learn skills to boost confidence and decision-making.
Curriculum
The program is delivered through role-play, mini-lectures, brainstorming, games, small group work, an anonymous question box, videos, guest speakers and parent-teen communication activities.
The program consists of 13 Lessons. Each lesson is 45–50 minutes.
Content
Lessons 1 and 2 focus on the student. Through activities, the students learn to articulate their individual strength and weaknesses, goals, maturity level, personal values and skills to handle pressure situations. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lessons 3-7 explore the components of a healthy relationship, skills to recognize a potentially abusive relationship and how to deal with attractions and corresponding emotions. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lessons 8 and 9 introduce healthy communication skills to be utilized in all relationships. Lessons explore the physiological and emotional aspects of anger with skills to self-regulate and maintain more productive avenues of communication. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lesson 10 explores setting physical/sexual boundaries to avoid unintended consequences such as pregnancy, STI/HIV, emotional or legal issues. Goal of this lesson is for students to take ownership over defining sexual boundaries in regards to their personal goals and aspirations. Defines intimacy as more than just sexual relations. Lesson provides real life experiences from teens about sexual regret and moving too quickly in relationships. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lesson 11 provides medically accurate information on pregnancy, STIs and HIV, as well as assertiveness skill practice for pressure situations. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lesson 12 provides a unique perspective of sexual decisions and consequences by exploring how an unplanned pregnancy would look through the eyes of a child. Explores the financial realities of teens as parents using evidence based statistics and other relational and emotional difficulties of being a teen parent. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.
Lesson 13 explores teens, technology and social media. Students learn to use social platforms as a tool to promote and support their dreams and aspirations while minimizing the risks associated with its use. Students learn the reality and risks of sexting, cyberbullying and pornography. Trusted adult-child communication activities are included to reinforce the lesson objectives and encourage open communication.