Training for Younger Students
Prajna tailors this workshop for 7th through 9th grade students to help them learn to feel confident and safe outside the world of the classroom. Many schools use this workshop in response to concerns for student safety regarding open campuses, coming to and from school, and unsupervised social interaction outside of school. In addition, we discuss the role that being assertive plays in all areas of student lives, including friendships and family.
We discuss situations students may experience that cause them to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or taken advantage of. Then we provide students with the tools they need to feel safe and in control over what happens to them in those situations. Examples of scenarios we discuss include what to do when a stranger harasses you, how to speak up for yourself when you feel a friend is taking advantage of you, and how to handle a situation when you feel you have been treated unfairly by an adult or authority figure.
Like most of our workshops, this training is highly interactive with time for student questions.
Training for High School & College Students
Over the years we have been frustrated by many self-defense programs because they focus primarily around “the girl in a dark alley being followed by a stranger” vignettes and notion of being a victim. While understanding those ideas is important, they are only one component of an effective program. Instead, the best self-defense arises from personal awareness of one’s surroundings, advance planning of how to carry oneself, and what to do to prevent becoming a victim in the first place.
Prajna not only provides self-defense and assertiveness workshops for schools, but also works directly with individual middle school, high school, and college students or with small groups of young women. Often, parents wish to provide an opportunity for their daughters to learn and practice ways they might feel more empowered on their own both in their school communities and when they move into the “real world” beyond. Typically, we work with parents to set up one to two sessions with their child. At the same time we welcome our clients to invite their daughter’s friends to join group sessions of 3-10 students.
Prajna’s self-defense workshops are an ideal gift to give to a family whose child is transitioning from middle school to high school or graduating from high school. Both girls and young women leave our workshops with a healthy balance of awareness and confidence rather than fear and anxiety.