CUMMING, Ga. — For the past few years, Joy Stanley has worked as the director of outreach education for Family Haven. Part of her job requires her to teach others about healthy dating relationships.
“I was looking for an interesting and meaningful teaching position,” Stanley said. “I felt passionate about teenagers. I have two of my own - an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old, and so I just stumbled upon this job posting and it was for outreach educator.”
She says it was a new endeavor for her and for Family Haven.
“They really had not had anybody do this exact position,” Stanley said. “I was charged with really sort of creating a curriculum that served the mission of introducing teenage domestic violence to the students in Forsyth County in the health classes.”
She currently teaches the curriculum in about 10 of the local middle and high schools, but she’s hoping that gets expanded.
“I feel like it is certainly not being covered as well as it should be,” Stanley said. “Georgia is number one in the nation for the highest rate of teenage domestic violence. One in three teenagers will be involved in a dangerous relationship, statistically.”
The curriculum, Stanley says, is interactive and always seems to be well received.
“We have pre-test and post-test scenarios,” she said. “We actually read it to the students, have those students break those scenarios down and describe what they hear in those scenarios that is not right. We talk about healthy resolution ideas. We talk about helping a friend that might be in a dangerous relationship.”
She says they also talk about the different types of abuse and how to identify each one.
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