Issues: Human Development

Assertiveness & Personal Safety

Training for Younger Students

Prajna tailors this workshop is tailored to 7th through 9th grade students to help them learn to feel confident and safe outside the world of the classroom. Many schools use this workshop in response to concerns for student safety regarding open campuses, coming to and from school, and unsupervised social interaction outside of school. In addition, we discuss the role that being assertive plays in all areas of student lives, including friendships and family.

We discuss situations students may experience that cause them to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or taken advantage of. Then we provide students with the tools they need to feel safe and in control over what happens to them in those situations. Examples of scenarios we discuss include what to do when a stranger harasses you, how to speak up for yourself when you feel a friend is taking advantage of you, and how to handle a situation when you feel you have been treated unfairly by an adult or authority figure.

Like most of our workshops, this training is highly interactive with time for student questions.

Training for High School & College Students

Over the years we have been frustrated by many self-defense programs because they focus primarily around “the girl in a dark alley being followed by a stranger” vignettes and notion of being a victim. While understanding those ideas is important, they are only one component of an effective program. Instead, the best self-defense arises from personal awareness of one’s surroundings, advance planning of how to carry oneself, and what to do to prevent becoming a victim in the first place.

Prajna not only provides self-defense and assertiveness workshops for schools, but also works directly with individual middle school, high school, and college students or with small groups of young women. Often, parents wish to provide an opportunity for their daughters to learn and practice ways they might feel more empowered on their own both in their school communities and when they move into the “real world” beyond. Typically, we work with parents to set up one to two sessions with their child. At the same time we welcome our clients to invite their daughter’s friends to join group sessions of 3-10 students.

Prajna’s self-defense workshops are an ideal gift to give to a family whose child is transitioning from middle school to high school or graduating from high school. Both girls and young women leave our workshops with a healthy balance of awareness and confidence rather than fear and anxiety.

Sample Workshop Outline — Assertiveness / Self-Defense Skills

9th & 10th Grade Program

Below is a general outline of a beginning workshop on assertiveness and self-defense. Families may choose to include all or some of the sections depending on their own goals for their child. Families are encouraged to state where they want more emphasis in the workshop as well.

All material presented is considered both developmentally appropriate and vital to the well-being and safety of young women.

Objectives:

• To become more aware of the obstacles that prevent us from taking care of ourselves and the tools that give us the power to.
• To look at and apply strategies we can use to communicate assertively, both verbally and physically.
• To practice ways that allow us to feel powerful and aware when out on our own.
• To learn more about strategies we can use when we feel our personal safety is threatened.

I. Myths and Facts:

The reality around what threatens our safety rather than how the media present it to us.

II. “The Set Up” — Gender Roles:

• Early socialization
• Social Awareness
• “Intellectual” vs. “emotional” assertiveness.

III. Educating Others how to Treat You:

• Difference between “Passive”, “Aggressive”, and “Assertive.”
• Setting limits, communicating limits, no mixed messages.
• Feel, Think, Act.

IV. Self Defense: Methods, behavior for situations when you feel threatened.

• The power of your gut (instinct).
• Balance between ignorance and paranoia.

V. Non-Physical:

• Assertive behavior (how to walk, where to look, what to say.)
• Acting on intuition, fighting socialized behavior.
• Bizarre behavior (talk or sing to self, recite grocery list, eat grass)

VI. Physical:

• The importance of the first two minutes.
• Strong to weak parts (Strong: head, elbows, legs, hands, knees, and teeth. Weak: eyes, temples, nose, throat, diaphragm, groin, knees, instep.)
• No groin
• How to walk, what to walk with.
• Stance on weapons (mace etc.)
  Moves: Finger pull, Kick/Scrape/Stomp, ear pop, body punch, eye poke, Plam to Adam’s apple and nose.