Provides Opportunities to Make Positive Connections with Influential Others

Description: An effective curriculum links students to influential persons who affirm and reinforce health-promoting norms, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Instructional strategies build on protective factors that promote healthy behaviors and enable students to avoid or reduce health risk behaviors by engaging peers, parents, families, and other positive adult role models in student learning. Teachers should not assume that all parents, guardians, or caregivers are positive influences and that every student has a positive influential person in their life. Therefore, it is important to help connect students with positive, influential adults in the school and the community.1

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Example 1

For this teaching example, the unit being taught is Mental and Emotional Health, and the HBO for the lesson is MEH-6: Get help for troublesome thoughts, feelings, or actions for oneself and others (HECAT Appendix 3).

  1. The students have already learned about signs and symptoms for a variety of mental health challenges and issues. Lessons have also focused on removing peer and social stigma around seeking help for mental health disorders, challenges, or issues.
  2. The health teacher invites the school-based counselor, psychologist, or social worker, as well as community-based mental health staff from a nearby health clinic, to speak to the students about mental and emotional health services. Students are encouraged to seek help for themselves or a friend if they are showing signs and symptoms of a mental health disorder.
Example 2

For this teaching example, the unit being taught is Violence Prevention, and the HBO for the lesson is V-7: Get help to prevent or stop violence including harassment, abuse, bullying, hazing, fighting, and hate crimes (HECAT Appendix 3).

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  1. The students have already learned about functional information and skills related to preventing harassment, abuse, bullying, hazing, fighting, and hate crimes.
  2. For this activity, the health teacher invites the school resource officer (SRO) to the class to help connect students with the SRO. Prior to the SRO visit, students are asked to prepare a list of questions for the SRO related to getting help to prevent or stop violence including harassment, abuse, bullying, hazing, fighting, and hate crimes. The health teacher gives the list of questions the students have created to the SRO. The SRO is then invited into the class to discuss the answers to the questions the students have created. Questions might include the following:
    1. What should I do if I hear someone talking about bringing a gun to school?
    2. My coach knows that all freshman go through a hazing process to be a part of the team, but I don’t want to participate. What should I do?
    3. My ex-boyfriend is stalking me. What can I do to make him stop?

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