Yonkers Public Schools and City of
Yonkers Award Healthy Respect $40,000
Matching Grant for successful Abstinence Education
Program
Healthy
Respect celebrates first year of Classroom
Teaching Teams, reaching more than 1,000 students
with interactive, character-based abstinence
education
When educators see firsthand the success of
Healthy Respect among students, they give
their wholehearted support to the proven abstinence
program. They know that Healthy Respect,
a curriculum developed for New York’s youth,
improves school attendance and provides students
with the information and support they need to make
healthy choices and avoid behaviors that can hurt
academic achievement and future performance.
The lesson of Healthy Respect in
Yonkers, New York, underlines all these facts. The
city’s Board of Education and Bureau of Community
Development granted the Healthy Respect
abstinence program $40,000 for the spring semester.
The grant was awarded in February, just as
Healthy Respect celebrated the completion of
its first year with full-time teaching teams.
Healthy Respect teaches abstinence in
direct collaboration with the Yonkers Medical Magnet
Program at Gorton High School and Commerce Middle
School. The Medical Magnet Program, with its unique
focus on preparing young students for careers in the
medical professions, has been an ideal partner for
program, which focuses not only on the negative
consequences of risky sexual behaviors, but also on
the positive aspects of character formation
essential for achieving healthy family relationships
and long-term professional goals.
Fern Eisgrub, Director of Magnet Programs for
Yonkers Public Schools, called the relationship with
Healthy Respect “a great partnership.”
“Healthy Respect teachers are very
well trained and have credibility with the
students,” she said. “They are a model for trusted
adults. Kids today desperately need information on
growth and development and making good decisions.
Healthy Respect meets a critical need,”
she concluded.
Written comments that students have given to
Healthy Respect teachers also tell a story
of success:
** “This class is great for learning about the real
world.”
** “I learned a lot about respecting myself.”
** “I like it better than any other class.”
One student summed up the Healthy Respect
message perfectly:
** “I learned a lot and will be careful about what I do with sex,
and what I
do with other people. I also will wait to have sex until after I am
married.”
The Healthy Respect Difference
The male-female classroom teaching teams make for the Healthy
Respect difference. Healthy Respect recruits,
hires, trains and supervises its own staff of teachers who file daily
reports after each class as part of an ongoing evaluation of the program.
This unique arrangement makes Healthy Respect accountable,
adaptable and focused on excellence in the classroom, where the teaching
experience counts the most.
Healthy Respect also employs the skills of an independent
researcher who evaluates confidential student surveys that are administered
before and after the classes. The evaluations document the changes in
attitudes and behavior among students who take the class, and provide
the foundation for tracking long-term behavior change.
In addition to the schools in Yonkers, Healthy Respect’s
teaching teams present the character-based curriculum in schools in
Brooklyn and Long Island.
Overall, the Healthy Respect program has reached more
than 1,000 students during the past two years.