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New HHD Curriculum to Target Teenage Dating Violence and Abuse
In response to the prevalence of teen dating abuse, Liz Claiborne, Inc. has funded HHD to create a high school curriculum called Love Is Not Abuse to educate and provide support and guidance to teens. It will be designed to address issues raised by teens in a national survey on dating abuse commissioned by Liz Claiborne, Inc. and conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU). The study findings convey a compelling call for help from an overwhelming majority of teens who state that physical and verbal abuse is a serious issue for them. 
“A lot of teens in abusive relationships are not talking, or they are going to their peers who don’t know where to get help,'' says Christine Blaber, Associate Director of the Center for School and Community Health Programs at Education Development Center, Inc., and Project Director. “We’re developing a curriculum so that kids can engage in frank conversation with a knowledgeable adult.”
Working with an Advisory Board that includes teenagers, researchers, and dating violence experts, HHD will develop a targeted effort to educate teens on how to prevent and respond to the physical, verbal, and sexual abuse that can occur in dating relationships. The Love Is Not Abuse curriculum will be designed to reach 9th grade students, enabling them to recognize and respond to dating violence and to seek help for peers suffering from relationship abuse. Liz Claiborne Inc. is funding and guiding the overall effort, as part of its Love Is Not Abuse program, which for the past 14 years has focused on raising awareness of and ultimately ending relationship violence.
“Our hope is that this curriculum will help educate teens on how to identify all forms of relationship abuse and understand what types of actions are and are not acceptable in a healthy dating relationship,” says Jane Randel, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Liz Claiborne, Inc.
The three-lesson curriculum will be designed to be taught in health education and English language arts classes. “It will draw on brief, engaging literary texts (poetry, short stories) to build awareness of how to make healthy choices in relationships,” says Blaber. “Students will read, discuss, and write about the text and then practice a skill related to the concept, for example, how to identify and reach out to an adult if you are in an abusive relationship or know someone who is.”
The goals of the Love Is Not Abuse curriculum will be to:
- Increase students’ awareness of and knowledge about teenage dating violence
- Enable students to challenge beliefs that support teenage dating violence
- Increase help-seeking behavior among students involved in dating relationships that include violence
The curriculum will contain detailed background information for teachers on the scope of the teenage dating violence problem and strategies for responding to students who disclose being in an abusive situation. According to Blaber, “We want to increase awareness among school staff regarding how to use the curriculum as part of a comprehensive, schoolwide approach to preventing dating abuse and other forms of adolescent violence.” Working closely with HHD will be Break the Cycle, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage, educate, and empower youth to build lives and communities free from dating and domestic violence.
“It is clear that dating violence is a critical problem facing youth in America and there is limited focus on this issue in our nation’s schools,” explains Blaber. “Our goal is to create a dynamic initiative that will be easily incorporated into the school day to help teenagers name dating violence, understand it, provide resources and suggestions about what to do when it arises, and ultimately help stop its growth.”
The Love Is Not Abuse curriculum will be piloted this fall in one school in each of the following communities: San Diego; Philadelphia; Tacoma, Washington; Lakeland, Washington; Pueblo, Colorado; Newton, Massachusetts; and Sebring, Florida.
June 30, 2005
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