By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
For more than 35 years, the Women’s Resource Center (WRC) has been operating in Athens and providing ways to first make life-affirming choices, and then supporting and empowering young women and men to successfully walk out those choices. This help has included everything from parenting classes, adoption options, baby formula, diapers, clothes, and life-changing educational opportunities.
Recently, Monica Williams, who has served at the WRC for several years as a volunteer client advocate, was hired for the specific role of teaching the Healthy Boundaries curriculum at the Center. In addition, the hope is that Monica will be able to get this excellent, free curriculum into our schools, both public and private. Healthy Boundaries was developed by a group in Tennessee called Decisions, Choices, and Options (DCO), and has a version that is designed for public schools, one that is faith-based, and one for parents. They are making tremendous headway with it in Tennessee, and prayerfully, that will be the case here in Alabama.
Healthy Boundaries is about far more than touch, intimacy, and unplanned pregnancy. It is essentially a personal, emotional self-defense course that has never been more important, especially for middle-school aged kids that get ferociously targeted by predators and each other. It includes dealing with texting, sexting, bullying, cyber-bullying, trafficking, substances, toxic relationships, suicide prevention, and more. It is highly practical, and teaches kids and parents how to protect the people they love and others, at school or in life, who are vulnerable.
Here is some of what Decisions, Choices, and Options has to say about the Healthy Boundaries curriculum for public and private schools, which Monica is certified to present:
DCO provides medically and scientifically factual sexual risk avoidance education programs for public middle and high school students with in classroom delivered curriculum and instruction. All of DCO’s public education resources are aligned to state educational standards for the respective content area classroom instruction. DCO educators are trained and certified by ASCEND, the nation’s top SRAE source for credentialed training programs and resources. DCO has nearly two decades of serving in the public education classroom.
DCO provides faith-based communities with biblically aligned, medically accurate sex education curricula with this goal of presenting a biblical worldview and scriptural truth in this vital area of youth development. Aligning the concepts of spiritual values of sexual integrity, personal worth and respect for others with optimal health, life success, and relational wholeness is the focus of other classroom delivered educational instruction for Christian schools as well as our latest downloadable curriculum, “Life Choices” online sex education program for youth and student ministry.
If you are an educator, public or private, you owe it to your students to get this into your school. There is absolutely no cost to the school, school district, or a teacher, and Monica stands ready to be the one to have the “tough conversations” that have been proven to work and that get results. Give the Women’s Resource Center a call today at 256-233-5775 to set up an appointment, or send an email to educator@wrcathens.org and let them help!
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
April 19, 2024
