Helping students adopt and maintain healthy behaviors is at the core of our school counseling program. To have healthy behaviors students must first start with education and awareness.

"A healthy relationship is when independent people make a deal that they will help one another become the best possible versions of themselves."

"A healthy relationship is one in which love enriches you; not imprisons you."

- Steve Maraboli

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

Unfortunately, dating violence is much more common that most people think.

Research shows that 1 in every 3 teens in the U.S. will experience physical, emotional, or sexual abuse from someone they are in a relationship with prior to becoming an adult. Here at Wachusett, our goal is for our school community to become more educated and aware about the issues surrounding teen dating violence.

(Source: Love is Respect)

If you or someone you know is experiencing teen dating violence, go to www.loveisrespect.org, or call 1-866-331-9474 or text LOVEIS to 22522.

Key dates to keep in mind:

Week of February 8th- Respect Week

Tuesday, February 9th- Wear Orange Day (to promote healthy relationships)

A relationship is an alliance, bond, connection, or closeness between people. We have many relationships in our lives when we think about all the different people we interact with over the course of a day (our family, friends, teachers, and classmates), but typically romantic relationships come to mind when the word relationship is mentioned.

Romantic relationships, like other relationships in your life, can be defined on a spectrum from healthy to unhealthy or even abusive.

• Healthy relationships are built around respect, equality, trust and support, honesty and accountability, open communication, compromise, shared responsibility, and the encouragement of personal growth.
• Unhealthy relationships are defined by a lack of communication and trust, dishonesty and disrespect, not taking responsibility for one's actions, one partner setting all the rules in the relationship, and controlling or using intimidation over the other.

(Source: National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence)

Consent means asking for permission before crossing someone else's boundary. Personal boundaries are defined by the individual person and can change and shift over time, but need to be respected regardless. Another way to look at consent is that it is:

• an active process between two people
• activity-specific
• can be taken back at any time
• must be given when one is in a free and clear headspace (Source: Teaching Tolerance)

Within a healthy romantic relationship, consent can be defined as "an ongoing mutual agreement between partners about what they want to experience."

(Source: Love is Respect - https://www.loveisrespect.org/healthy-relationships/understand-consent/)

Staying in contact with friends and family during quarantine impacted time off is increasingly difficult. It is easy to fall into a binge marathon of a new show on Netflix or read a book start to finish over the span of a week. Maintaining our relationships takes more effort than it every has before because spur of the moment encounters happen rarely if at all. The challenge for February is to earn as many points as you can during the week off. Use the apps recommended in the next section to gain points throughout the week. Below is a chart of some point values for different activities you can do to maintain contact with people in your life during the time off.

1 point- Play a game of words with friends with a friend or family member.

1 point- Add a scheduled call or Facetime with a friend to your calendar for some point in the week to ensure that you make time to talk with them.

2 points- Have a 15 minute or more Facetime with a friend or family member.

3 points- Have a 15 minute or more Facetime with a friend or family member that you have not seen of talked to in over a month.

Can you earn 15 social points during February Vacation?