Choosing To Be Violence Free in Middle School

Abstract

This paper describes the theoretical basis and content of the universal student component of the Guiding Responsibility and Expectations for Adolescents for Today and Tomorrow (GREAT) Schools and Families' middle school violence prevention program for changing school climate. The GREAT Student Program builds on and extends the content of the sixth grade Responding In Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP-6) social–cognitive violence prevention program through an expanded conceptual framework that focuses on changing school norms and explicitly incorporates cultural and contextual goals. The program consists of twenty 40-minute lessons taught by a trained facilitator on a weekly basis during the school day.

Introduction

The GREAT (Guiding Responsibility and Expectations for Adolescents for Today and Tomorrow) Student Program is designed to facilitate the promotion and enactment of prosocial norms and behaviors by all students in the school, while simultaneously reducing risk for violence perpetration and victimization. It is part of the GREAT Schools and Families Violence Prevention Project for changing school climate in middle schools. This paper describes the program's content and implementation, its history and conceptual framework, and its training and supervision.

Overview of the GREAT Student Program

The GREAT Student Program is a universal social–cognitive violence prevention program focused primarily on situational and relationship violence. Its goal is to promote effective social–cognitive problem-solving skills, motivation and self-efficacy for using those skills, and school norms that support those attitudes and skills, while at the same time reducing the appeal and perceived effectiveness of violent behaviors and attitudes. By targeting these attitudes and skills, the program is designed to increase social competence as well as to reduce violent behavior and victimization (Figure 1).

Figure 1. GREAT Student conceptual model.

GREAT, Guiding Responsibility and Expectations, for Adolescents for Today and Tomorrow; SCIDDLE, Stop, Calm down, Identify the problem and your feelings about it, Decide among your GREAT choices, Do it, Look back, Evaluate.

Content and Implementation of the GREAT Student Program

The GREAT Student Program consists of twenty 40-minute lessons that are facilitated by a trained prevention specialist once a week and is complemented by the GREAT Teacher Program.¹ The curriculum is generally taught during a class period or one half of an academic block (usually an elective, social studies, or health education). Students are instructed in the use of a social–cognitive problem-solving model SCIDDLE (Stop, Calm down, Identify the problem and your feelings about it, Decide among your GREAT choices, Do it, Look back, and Evaluate), as well as specific skills for violence prevention (e.g., avoid potentially violent situations, ignore teasing, ask for help, get along, turn down the heat, talk things through, and be a helper). Through repeated use of this problem-solving model, increased awareness of the nonviolent options, and opportunities for reflection and practice, participants learn how to choose the prosocial strategy most likely to provide the desired short- and long-term outcomes in a given situation.

The lessons in the GREAT Student Program introduce the problem-solving model in a cumulative fashion, with each lesson building on the previous ones (Table 1). A combination of four basic strategies is used throughout the program: behavioral repetition and mental rehearsal of the social–cognitive problem-solving model, small-group activities, experiential learning techniques, and didactic learning modalities. Small-group activities provide opportunities to experiment with the problem-solving model and nonviolent options, allowing students to use the skills during group tasks with peers and in role-plays.

Table 1. Lessons for GREAT Student Program.

Lesson 1, Getting Started with the GREAT Students Program	To get acquainted with the students, to discuss ground rules and logical consequences, and to introduce the GREAT Students Program. To get better acquainted with the classroom teacher and continue building a positive working relationship with him or her.
Lesson 2. The Chain of Violence and the GREAT Choices	To build student awareness of how one violent act is linked to the next. This is what we describe as the “chain of violence.” To build student awareness that we can break free from the chain of violence by having options other than violence.
Lesson 3. Stopping and Calming Down→ The First Steps of SCIDDLE	To introduce the social–cognitive problem-solving model of SCIDDLE as a tool for choosing the best option, enacting a plan, and evaluating how well that plan worked. To demonstrate a deep-breathing activity as an example of the first two steps of SCIDDLE→ Stop and Calm Down.
Lesson 4. Working Together in Groups	To continue getting acquainted with the students and the classroom teacher. To formally introduce the ground rules, rewards, and consequences. To introduce the procedures for small-group work, within the GREAT Students Program framework.
Lesson 5. Identifying Feelings Through Body Talk	To learn the importance of attending to nonverbal communication in identifying feelings in others, especially in conflict situations.
Lesson 6. Identifying Your Feelings and the Problem You Are Having	To help students understand that anger is a normal part of life. To generate a list of anger-provoking situations. To recognize the internal signs that precede or accompany anger. To illustrate the healthy and unhealthy ways to express anger. To integrate and practice the first three steps in SCIDDLE.
Lesson 7. Deciding When to “Walk On” and Avoid Danger: A GREAT Choice for NOW	To help the students understand the strategy of avoidance as an option for managing imminent danger at school, after school, and in the neighborhood.
Lesson 8. Deciding to Explore the Option Ignore: Another GREAT Choice for NOW	To help the students understand the ways that ignoring can be an option for violence prevention and the times when this strategy would be most appropriate. To teach the value of using self-talk to figure out how to deal with teasing, as well as the role of the helper in ignoring.
Lesson 9. Deciding to Ask for Help: Another GREAT Choice for NOW	To build student awareness that in some circumstances asking for help is the best option to choose.
Lesson 10. Remembering to Look Back and Evaluate After You Decide	To show students how to reflect on choices they make and appraise the consequences of their decisions.
Lesson 11. Identifying the Program→ What's Wrong?	To help students identify problems they face in their daily lives that have the potential to impede their ability to handle conflict in peaceful, positive, and powerful ways.
Lesson 12. The Solution→ Choosing Respect and Dignity	To examine the use of respect and disrespect in interacting with others. To explore the concept of dignity as showing respect for yourself. To present using respect and dignity as guiding principles for a violence-free life.
Lesson 13. Deciding to Get Along with Others: A GREAT Choice for LIFE	To learn how to appropriately join a group. To learn how to respectfully decline a social proposition without being hurtful. To learn how to be inclusive of others.
Lesson 14. Deciding to Turn Down the Heat (Part 1): Another GREAT Choice for LIFE	To introduce another strategy students have at their disposal for resolving conflicts peacefully, or for stopping a potentially violent situation froescalating—“Turning Down the Heat!”
Lesson 15. Deciding to Turn Down the Heat (Part 2): Another GREAT Choice for LIFE	To practice the strategies for reducing the tension that were introduced in Lesson 14.
Lesson 16. Deciding to Talk it Out (Part 1): Another GREAT Choice for LIFE	To learn to respond to conflicts with people students care about by resolving the conflicts assertively.
Lesson 17. Deciding to Talk it Out (Part 2): Another GREAT Choice for LIFE	To provide an opportunity for the students to practice the conflict resolution strategy of Talking it Out.
Lesson 18. Deciding to Be a Helper: Another GREAT Choice for LIFE	To build student awareness of the role students can play as the helper. To challenge students to avoid bystander roles that are either passive or instigating conflict.
Lesson 19. Putting SCIDDLE together	To provide an opportunity for the students to summarize GREAT Choices for NOW and LIFE by discussing and role-playing all the steps in SCIDDLE.
Lesson 20. The GREAT Commencement	To affirm students for the hard work they have done during the year and for the decisions that they will make as a result of that work.

GREAT, Guiding Responsibility and Expectations, for Adolescents for Today and Tomorrow;

SCIDDLE, Stop, Calm down, Identify the problem and your feelings about it, Decide among your GREAT choices, Do it, Look back, Evaluate.

Thus, while the facilitator is getting to know the students in Lessons 1 to 3, he or she introduces the key concepts and knowledge base for the program (e.g., the social–cognitive problem-solving model; the value of stopping and calming down before acting). In Lesson 4, the facilitator introduces small-group work, one of the primary modes of activity in the program. Skills for identifying one's feelings and those of others are practiced in Lessons 5 and 6. The use of the GREAT Choices for NOW of Avoid, Ignore, and Ask for Help for both yourself and others is discussed and practiced through small-group activities in Lessons 7 to 9. In these lessons, and in those that follow, facilitators emphasize how the choices presented are to be used in a thoughtful way, not in an automatic way, as none of them alone can address each and every problem. Instead, facilitators work to demonstrate to students that a person in a difficult situation is most powerful when he or she knows many options and can act through choice, rather than acting reactively. Lesson 10 provides an opportunity to see how all the steps of the problem-solving model work together by applying the last two steps, Look Back and Evaluate, to various scenarios. In this way, the first ten lessons of the program as a whole focus on GREAT Choices for NOW (e.g., Avoid, Ignore, and Ask for Help).

The remaining ten lessons of the curriculum focus on consideration of the process of identifying the problem. In Lesson 11, students examine problems frequently faced by sixth graders to determine what is wrong. The focus of Lesson 12 is to challenge students to seek solutions that exemplify respect for all involved in the problem. In Lessons 13 to 18, students work in small groups to create role-plays that demonstrate the GREAT Choices for LIFE of Getting Along with Others, Turning Down the Heat, Talking it Out, and Being a Helper. Again, for each skill, students consider and practice ways it can be used by the individual directly involved in the problem, as well as by those outside the problem (e.g., the bystanders). Lesson 19 serves as an opportunity to pull together everything learned in the GREAT Student Program. Students generate problem scenarios and role-plays that use as many skills as possible from the program. Closure of the program is provided in Lesson 20 with activities designed to help the student evaluate what he or she has learned in the program, as well as to encourage students to commit to choosing respect and dignity and being violence-free by signing a pledge.

Theoretical and Empirical Background of the GREAT Student Program

The multisite curriculum work group that developed the GREAT Student Program was careful to base the program solidly in research on early adolescent development and effective violence prevention strategies and then to build the program's content on the best practices available in the field. The universal violence prevention curriculum selected for modification was the sixth-grade component of Responding In Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP-6) curriculum² (Meyer A, Northup W, unpublished manuscript, 1998). This program has been rigorously evaluated in both urban and rural schools^3–5 and has received national recognition for its effectiveness, most recently being designated a Model Program by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Agency (http://www.modelprograms.samhsa.gov). (For a more detailed description of RIPP-6 and its conceptual model, see Meyer and Farrell⁶). The conceptual framework and implications for prevention that the two programs share are presented first, followed by the expanded framework and content for the GREAT Student Program. A more detailed description of the GREAT Student Program lessons, training, and supervision is presented last.

Shared Conceptual Framework

Experts suggest that the peak in antisocial and violent behaviors that occurs in adolescence is related to the normative developmental tasks youth face at this time⁷. In particular, given that increased autonomy requires more complex decision making, and that a focus on peers means more opportunities for conflict,⁸ these developmental issues are important topics for violence prevention programs. Because interpersonal conflict and immature decision making can lead to aggression and other problems, a focus on interpersonal (e.g., adolescent–adolescent, adolescent–teacher) and situational violence (e.g., being in the wrong place at the wrong time, bystanders who encourage fighting, easy availability of guns) is suggested for universal violence prevention programs designed for this age group.⁹

The social information-processing model articulated by Dodge and colleagues^10,11 describes how a child's intentional or unintentional response when challenged is a function of that child's capabilities, social knowledge, and ability to process social information accurately. For example, a student faced with the challenge of getting into a fight after school has to take stock of the situation (i.e., encode), determine what it means in light of previous experiences (i.e., interpret external and internal cues), decide what is important (i.e., clarify and select goals), decide what to do (i.e., response decision), and then do it (i.e., behavioral enactment). The implications for prevention program development are that the problem-solving model should emphasize effective social information-processing and encourage the development of specific skills that help students accurately assess what is happening. Experiences in the program classroom should also contribute to social knowledge of positive consequences for prosocial behavior.

Lemerise and Arsenio¹² build on Crick and Dodge's¹⁰ social information processing model by illustrating the important role emotions serve in organizing thoughts and motivating behaviors through affect–event links that facilitate adaptive goal-directed behavior. For example, if a student feels happy and safe after deciding on an action that avoids a fight, positive emotions become tied to that memory, making it more likely that the same choice and behavior will be chosen again in a similar situation. Because emotions both reinforce and punish behaviors, it is extremely important that youth experience positive emotions when engaged in socially desirable behavior. Incorporation of role-plays and noncompetitive games can provide these experiences, therefore maximizing the probability that youth will select socially adaptive behavior in the future.

Work on negative attributions¹³ indicates that people who become angry and aggressive when they have an unpleasant experience often attribute that experience to others whom they believe could have controlled what happened, regardless of their actual involvement. These types of negative attributions are related to increases in aggression. Similarly, another factor that affects a child's ability to process information accurately is how well he or she is able to manage feeling upset, angry, or anxious. The abilities to identify and manage these feelings and to become calm before acting are important to the types of attributions a person makes.^14,15 Moreover, youth who cannot identify their feelings and recognize their own ability to manage them may make the attribution that the other person is trying to take control of them and may resort to violence as a way to regain personal control and power.¹⁶ The implications for violence prevention from this body of research are the importance of teaching skills for identifying feelings and calming down, of providing opportunities to experience the benefits of being calm during conflict and of calming down before acting. Reinforcing these types of positive experiences may increase the chance that students remember to take time to be calm before acting in the future.

Other research has focused on thought patterns that underlie aggressive responses in children, whatever their current emotional or physiological state. Huesmann's¹⁷ conceptualization of cognitive scripts is based on the idea that many behaviors, including approaches to problem solving, are controlled by the things people learn as children that they say over and over in their minds. These thoughts can be learned through personal experience or by observing others. Youth are often encouraged by peers and social groups to handle conflict in aggressive ways, rather than seeking help or resolving conflict in peaceful ways, reinforcing aggressive behavior over time. In other words, aggressive behavior is controlled to a great extent by scripts that are encoded, rehearsed, stored, and retrieved in much the same way as scripts for intellectual behavior. The constancy of such scripts, once encoded, accounts to a great extent for the stability of aggression across time and situations.¹⁷ Therefore, violence prevention programs should encourage adolescents to critically examine their own thoughts and behavior, teach them to consider alternative responses, provide opportunities to observe nonviolent means of conflict resolution, and encourage practice of cognitive scripts for positive behavior.

Expanded Conceptual Framework

When the multisite curriculum work group revised and expanded the RIPP-6 curriculum for the GREAT Student Program, it incorporated advances in the field and addressed recommendations resulting from previous research on the RIPP-6 program. The GREAT Student Program includes these additional themes: culture and context, self-efficacy for nonviolence, promoting prosocial goals and positive school norms, and climate.

Culture and context

In revising the RIPP-6 curriculum, special attention was paid to issues of culture and context in both the content and implementation process of the intervention. The curriculum development work group was especially committed to developing an intervention with the flexibility to be effectively translated and implemented across different settings. This flexibility was particularly important for the current investigation because of the notable variation across and within intervention sites with respect to ethnic composition, socioeconomic status, geographic location, and unique sociocultural histories of individual school and community settings.¹⁸ This focus was further supported by research noting cultural and contextual variations in violence perpetration and victimization. Specifically, the surveillance literature on youth violence prevention describes in detail the disproportionate effect that violence has had on poor ethnic minority communities.^19–21 Supporting empirical work underlines the role of contextual factors such as economic disadvantage, stressful life events, and neighborhood violence in predicting group differences in externalizing behavior.^22–24 Therefore, although the curriculum was designed to help students master a particular set of social information processing and related behavioral response skills, a certain degree of flexibility was required because of the differences in how violence, victimization, and their risk factors would be manifested across schools in this study.

For the current work, we have defined culture as the shared values, norms traditions, customs, arts, history, folklore, and institutions of a group of people.²⁵ In contrast, context also includes structural aspects of the social and physical environment (e.g., housing and population density, homogeneity of the cultural environment). At the conceptual level, the emphasis on cultural and contextual relevance was guided by the overall intervention's grounding in social information processing theory. There are several points in our conceptual model at which culture and context play an important role. For example, context may influence the type and frequency of situational cues.²⁵ Cultural beliefs regarding the meaning of specific social interactions (e.g., interpersonal conflict, perceived social and physical risk) may shape the interpretation and mental representation of these cues, as well as youth perceptions of their goals for managing these situations. The influence of culture and context on an individual's prior experiences in specific social contexts as well as overt behavioral enculturation plays a central role in shaping the behavioral responses available to any particular youth.

Although a number of programs address or integrate aspects of culture and context into their interventions, the conceptual and theoretical underpinning of these intervention strategies has often remained unclear. Many social–cognitive interventions have taught general skills sets without regard to specific cultural or contextual considerations. Other more purely cultural interventions (i.e., programs that focus exclusively on teaching cultural traditions and behaviors, provide education on cultural history, and provide information relevant to the development of cultural identities) have shown promise.²⁶ In the current intervention, the goal was to provide a general skills set with enough flexibility to make the skills relevant to the unique context and culture of participants, while at the same time increasing student engagement in the program.

To do this, the cultural and contextual implications of the content and process of each session of the intervention were reviewed by a subcommittee of the curriculum development work group. This subcommittee articulated cultural and contextual goals underlying each lesson on which the facilitators were trained to reflect and include as they implemented the program. The goals include the following:

• to promote the development of individual and group relationships across social group membership boundaries;

• to develop a set of skills that has cultural relevance across various cultural groups;

• to help students apply a range of skills in ways that are appropriate to their own culture and context;

• to validate and affirm the power and comfort of relationships with people who share our cultural background, while simultaneously reiterating the need to be respectful and tolerant of difference; and

• to recognize that teasing, cracking, and ignoring have different meanings across contexts and cultures.

Those goals address issues related to the composition and interpersonal histories of groups in a classroom. The curriculum's implementation process and emphasis on the youth's generation of examples for discussion and role-play provide other important mechanisms to support the cultural and contextual relevance of lesson materials. Lesson materials also address youths' roles in self-selection into developmental “micro” contexts that may be more or less safe for youth. An example of how this lesson works is when the skill Avoid is taught and facilitators work with students to identify specific locations in their own schools and communities that are unsafe, as well as strategies for how to avoid those specific situations.

Self-efficacy for nonviolence

According to social learning theory, if young people do not experience success in trying out a new behavior, they will not perceive themselves as capable of that behavior and will have limited response options.²⁷ This theory has been supported in research on the role of self-efficacy in promoting adolescent health behaviors.²⁸ Thus, it follows that violence prevention programs need to foster a youth's self-efficacy for nonviolent and socially adaptive behaviors. Ideally, students will learn that a person is most powerful and efficacious when he or she knows many nonviolent options for solving problems.

Although the concept of self-efficacy for nonviolent behavior was implied in the RIPP-6 program, it was not explicitly identified in the conceptual model and, thus, not measured as a mediating variable in evaluations of RIPP-6. Moreover, although the skills taught in RIPP-6 were relatively simple, the curriculum development team thought that there were many ways to present and practice the skills that would make them easier to recall and try, thus increasing students' sense that they were capable of enacting the skills. In the GREAT Student Program, close attention was paid to the way the four nonviolent options and problem-solving model were taught in the RIPP-6 program and how they might be more clearly communicated to youth. Changes to the curriculum involved redefining some of the options to be more clear to students (e.g., “turn down the heat” instead of “diffuse tense situations”), breaking up the options into a set of relatively easy attitudinal and behavioral responses that is taught first (i.e., GREAT Choices for NOW) and a set of more complicated choices that is taught later (i.e., GREAT Choices for LIFE), and practicing the entire problem-solving model mid-program instead of primarily as part of the program's closure (e.g., students practice Looking Back and Evaluating in Lesson 10).

Positive school norms and prosocial goals

Prosocial norms within school settings and high levels of prosocial support can function as protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors.²⁹ Moreover, research on the types of strategies youth use to solve problems indicates that they are related directly to the goals students have in that situation.³⁰ For example, youth who have the goal of maintaining good relationships are more likely to use the prosocial strategies of verbal assertion, compromise, and seek help from a teacher than those who want to maintain personal control or to seek revenge. Thus, the addition of a social environment supportive of prosocial cognitive scripts and behavioral skills can increase the likelihood that youths will use those strategies. This implies the need for prevention activities that encourage youths to stand up for one another, promote mutual respect, and push youths to focus on the goal of attaining the best outcome for all involved.

Although the RIPP-6 program did address school norms and the promotion of prosocial goals, several components of the GREAT Student Program were strengthened to more effectively address this area. The first change was to establish the expectation that students can and should receive support from each other and from their teachers by adding the options of “asking for help” and “being a helper.” The second change was to include specific instruction and training about how any skill could be used to solve problems for the youth themselves or for their peers. Discussion of how such skills benefited the entire student body (e.g., to stop a fight from happening at school with you or a peer, you can try to “turn down the heat” through a simple distraction) was also added to the curriculum.

Third, the catchy slogan that was developed to embody the positive expectation of the RIPP-6 program that one could choose to respond peacefully and have lots of friends or respond violently and risk being killed (i.e., “You Can Respond in Peaceful and Positive Ways OR You Can Rest in Peace Permanently—the Choice Is YOURS!”) was changed because it did not transfer well to prevention sites that were diverse demographically, geographically, and by life experience. Instead, the curriculum development group created a slogan that captured the norm being promoted by the program, was memorable and powerful, and could apply to youth across all sites. Appropriately titled, the GREAT Slogan is: “I choose to be violence-free and live my life with dignity.” This simple sentence can be broken into meaningful subideas (e.g., “I choose” and “I choose to be violence-free and live my life”) and used in fun ways, such as a chant, cheer, or rap.

A lesson focused on the concepts of “respect for others” and “respect for yourself” (i.e., dignity) was the fourth change. It was developed as part of the introduction to the more complicated nonviolent options when they are taught midway through the program. Ideally, students will become motivated to try these options when they see how their use helps preserve the dignity of all involved.

School climate

Efforts aimed at supporting and promoting desirable behavior and attitudes among students must give attention to fostering a positive school climate.³¹ Research on student–school bonding indicates that higher levels of student–school bonding is positively related to school adjustment and positive school climate and that it is negatively related to problem behavior.³² To change antisocial behavior in schools, Reid et al.³³ posit that a multimodal approach involving many levels of the student body, from students themselves to playground supervisors, must be taken. Unfortunately, the education and prevention literature is replete with studies describing the stress, absence of support, and lack of training in effective behavior management many teachers experience.^1,18,34

The GREAT Teacher Program¹ described elsewhere in this supplement supports the GREAT Student Program's efforts to promote a positive school climate through the development of prosocial behaviors and positive school norms by encouraging similar behaviors and expectations in teachers. The GREAT Student and Teacher components were developed in concert such that each would support and reinforce the other over time. Unlike RIPP-6 in which efforts to involve the entire school were focused on the implementation of a schoolwide peer mediation program, the GREAT universal programs include sustained skill-building and attitude-changing activities for both students and teachers.

Training and Supervision for the GREAT Student Program

Facilitators for the GREAT Student Program are hired on the basis of their educational background (e.g., bachelor's degree in education or psychology), as well as experience and skill in classroom settings at the middle school level. Although similar criteria are used in hiring program staff members, strengths vary across individual facilitators. For that reason, the 36-hour training protocol for implementing the GREAT Student Program consists of three complementary, yet essential, components: (1) presentation and classroom management, (2) program content, and (3) training for excellence in interpersonal skills.

Presentation and classroom management consists of a series of activities that review presentation skills, enhance classroom management, and set a high expectation level for presenting program material in the classroom. A large proportion of these activities involve participating in the 2-day workshop of the GREAT Teacher Program, given its exceptional coverage of issues related to classroom management. In terms of content, facilitators read background material on the conceptual framework of the program and the entire curriculum. To encourage both mastery of the content of the program and its delivery, facilitators proceed through various levels of responsibility in its implementation. Facilitators start as participants themselves (with the trainers leading the lessons), then lead the program in a simulated ideal setting with attentive participants, and then lead the program in a simulated context of everyday, yet difficult, classroom problems.

The training for excellence in interpersonal skills is based on the assumption that anyone at anytime can improve his or her listening, empathy, negotiation, problem-solving, and nonviolence skills and that those who implement the GREAT Student Program must be exemplary models of such skills for both students and adults. In other words, although facilitators are selected who have these skills already, the training aims to enhance the strengths of the facilitator. Training in cultural competence is another component of excellence in interpersonal skills, designed to support the cultural appropriateness of the intervention. Training exercises are designed to assist facilitators in identifying cultural belief systems, contextual assumptions, biases, and stereotypes, particularly about the meaning of violence in adolescence. Many youth are told that violence is necessary by their family and community, not to mention the use of violence in media and certain sports. This perception requires that the facilitator be facile in the acknowledgement that, although it is common for different behaviors to be expected in different settings (e.g., how someone would act with a friend is different from how that person would act when being interviewed for a job), this type of behavior is expected at school and is likely to support him or her being successful as adults. In addition, because a core assumption of the GREAT Student Program is that of exercising personal choice in nonviolent ways, specific activities help facilitators understand how youth from under-resourced contexts might feel about the ease and possibility of such choices in their own lives.

Senior staff members who are experienced in program implementation and design supervise the facilitators for the GREAT Student Program. Over the course of the 20 lessons, weekly 1- to 2-hour group meetings are conducted whereby successes and struggles are shared and upcoming lessons are reviewed. In addition, the senior staff member observes and meets with each facilitator weekly during the first 3 to 4 weeks of the program. As the program continues, the senior staff member continues to meet and observe each staff member, but on a less regular basis, depending on the needs of each facilitator.

Summary

The GREAT Student Program seeks to nurture in students those skills, behaviors, and attitudes that enhance the likelihood of healthy outcomes for themselves, their peers, and the school environment. Beyond an emphasis on concrete behavioral training is the attention given to student empowerment by assisting students in understanding the dynamics and personal power exercised by making informed and reasoned choices. By providing this attention, the program assists students with the development of skills important to effective decision making and problem solving right now, with applicability to situations they will face throughout their lives. The GREAT Teacher Program complements the goals and objectives of this program with a focus on the development of effective behavior management practices coupled with the peer support to deal with the challenges of teaching.

In sum, the public health implications of school-based violence prevention efforts such as the GREAT Student Program that focus on changing the values and norms within the school environment are far-reaching. Several studies speak to the rarity of homicide and the most serious forms of interpersonal violence occurring at schools or school-associated events when compared with their occurrence outside of school environs.^34,35 However, what is also beginning to emerge is clear empirical evidence that students in positive school environments (e.g., nonviolent norms) learn and achieve more academically and that as a result they are at significantly lower risk of the most serious forms of violence (i.e., homicide³⁶). Thus, schools will continue to be a critical partner in public health efforts to reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by youth violence in the United States.