Safe School Ambassadors is an essential guide for school administrators, counselors, teachers, parents, and youth organization leaders. It challenges the current "outside-in" thinking?that keeping schools safe is accomplished primarily by adults through heightened security and stricter policies. It makes the case for a complementary ?inside-out? approach that taps the power of students to change the social norms of a school culture in order to stop bullying and violence.

Forged from the experiences of a principal whose school and community underwent several tragedies in one year, Safe Schools is a practical guidebook from a proactive leader who has been there. The book is designed to provide the administrator with a step-by-step crisis preparedness evaluation. After working through the checklists and forms in this resource, school leaders will know just how prepared their school is. School climate questionnaires, a three pronged safety plan, training for a crisis management team, and a bibliography of resources will guide administrators as they strive to empower their school and community.

Safe Passage: A Guide to Addressing School Violence offers expert perspectives and guidance in understanding, assessing, and addressing school violence. Although the book is designed for child and adolescent forensic psychiatrists and psychologists seeking proficiency in youth violence risk assessment, educators, school administrators, mental health clinicians, other health care professionals who work with children, and interested laypersons will also find the book both practical and illuminating. The editors' approach to school violence is informed by their educational, scholarly, clinical, and forensic work with children and adults who have been disenfranchised through the cumulative effects of poverty, trauma, untreated mental illness, and inadequate access to education. This background has fostered a sensitivity to and understanding of critically important developmental factors that can be passed on generationally, which are explored in depth in the volume. Case vignettes and follow-ups are used liberally to illustrate and illuminate the range of violent situations (e.g., bullying, cyberbullying, gang violence, sexual violence) likely to be encountered, as well as the advantages and disadvantages inherent in various interventions. The authors stress that threat assessment must take individual, school, and community variables into account, a complex but necessary task for mental health professionals and educators who wish to safeguard individuals and society from harm. This book provides a road map for understanding and addressing violence of all kinds in the school environment: The subtyping of aggression is thoroughly explored, with special focus on reward-seeking behaviors and the development of impulse control in adolescents. Identifying students at risk for violence or abuse at home is of critical importance. The chapter on danger at home teaches the reader to recognize trauma symptoms and examines the necessary steps toward establishing a trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive school environment. In violence risk assessment, every student is evaluated in relation to static risk factors (historical variables that cannot be changed), dynamic risk factors (risk factors that are amenable to change) and protective factors. The authors emphasize that violence risk is characterized along a continuum rather than in binary fashion. Case law is cited where relevant throughout the book, providing context for the evolution of school policies toward violence. Key points and clinical pearls at the end of each chapter provide convenient summaries of information and help the reader focus on the most important ideas. Compassionate and comprehensive, Safe Passage: A Guide to Addressing School Violence introduces readers to important concepts pertaining to school violence and serves as a practical guide for mitigating and preventing violence in our schools.

This is the poignant life-and-death story of Johnny Stack, whose young and vibrant life ended by suicide after his descent into addiction to high-potency marijuana and cannabis-induced psychosis. You'll laugh and cry with his mother, Laura Stack, as she retells the story of Johnny's joyful childhood and then takes you through the unthinkable tragedy of his loss. It's every parent's nightmare. But this book is much more than Johnny's story. Today Laura, who is a nationally recognized speaker and best-selling author, leads a national effort of parents, impacted family members, healthcare professionals, coalitions, teachers, and youth who are concerned about the harmful effects of marijuana on our children, teenagers, and emerging adults. This book is a clarion call for parents across America to educate themselves about the risks of today's high-THC marijuana products and to better understand the potentially devastating effects on youth mental health. Laura's real-life story is backed by recent scientific-based research on how today's potent THC products lead to mental illnesses in adolescents, such as anxiety, depression, paranoia, psychosis, and sadly, suicidal ideation. This book is her vision to dramatically decrease adolescent marijuana usage, the false perception of safety, mental illness, and suicide, to allow our youth to live productive, happy lives.

This book explores interpersonal situations in which weak or vulnerable people find themselves and the ways in which others help create, sustain, and eradicate such social dynamics. Vladimir Shlapentokh and Eric Beasley demonstrate that people can gain power over each other and then abuse this power because of unequal resource conditions. The authors define resources as the means necessary for satisfaction or achievement of needs or goals, such as wealth, physical strength, intellectual capacity and information, sexual attractiveness, and status. This volume is different from existing social science books on inequality and vulnerability, which address relations between people of different social positions, races, genders, ages, and places of residence confronting each other in political, economic, and cultural battles. This book focuses on people who become the victims of those whom they know personally-relatives, colleagues, neighbors. The authors argue that unequal resource distribution among members of social units is the main cause of conflict and ultimately creates situations where members of a social unit can abuse other members of the same unit.

Evidence-based bullying-prevention principles, policies, and practices to reduce peer cruelty and create safe, caring learning climates. Based on a practical, six-part framework for reducing peer cruelty and increasing positive behavior support, End Peer Cruelty, Build Empathy utilizes the strongest pieces of best practices and current research for ways to stop bullying. The book includes guidelines for implementing strategies, collecting data, training staff, mobilizing students and parents, building social-emotional skills, and sustaining progress, and presents the “6Rs” of bullying prevention: Rules, Recognize, Report, Respond, Refuse, and Replace. This is not a program, but a comprehensive process for reducing bullying from the inside out, involving the entire school community. Bullying-prevention and character education expert Michele Borba, who’s worked with over 1 million parents and educators worldwide, offers realistic, research-based strategies and advice. Use the book on its own or to supplement an existing program. Digital content includes customizable forms from the book and a PDF presentation for use in professional development.

The School Discipline Consensus Report presents a comprehensive set of consensus-based and field-driven recommendations to improve conditions for learning for all students and educators, better support students with behavioral needs, improve police-schools partnerships, and keep students out of the juvenile justice system for minor offenses. More than 100 advisors representing policymakers, school administrators, teachers, behavioral health professionals, police, court leaders, probation officials, juvenile correctional leaders, parents, and youth from across the country helped develop more than two dozen policies and 60 recommendations to keep more students in productive classrooms and out of court rooms.