One of the most significant steps we can take to prevent sexual violence is to promote healthy relationships from a young age. Supporting middle and high school students as they establish healthy boundaries, understand their personal values and navigate safe space in their lives can be an instrumental step to building healthy relationships throughout their lives. The Start Strong initiative from Futures Without Violence believes:

If we act early to educate our young people and engage them in conversations about healthy relationships … we stop teen dating violence before it starts. If we successfully educate and empower our middle schoolers, they will take their healthy relationship habits into high school and beyond, and transfer them to friends and family.ⁱ

In this lesson students will:

• Explore the values of healthy relationships and list the many influences that contribute to unhealthy relationships.
• Build vocabulary and use media literacy skills to analyze different scenes from Audrie & Daisy. This will help students understand the dynamics of healthy and unhealthy relationships both on- and offline.
• Reflect upon the different roles they hold in relationships and identify ways to shift a role when it is important.

Through reflection and discussion activities students will prepare to answer the following questions:

• What are the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships?
• How have relationships changed with the use of social media? What is the etiquette to use on social media if you are dating, if you are having a conflict or if you break up?
• What are the benefits of a healthy relationship? What are the costs of unhealthy relationships
• What do I need to know in order to have healthy relationships throughout my life?

Open this lesson by communicating your trigger warning. For the lesson on healthy relationships, cultural variations may reflect a variety of different practices and beliefs regarding dating, gender roles in relationships, or uses of social media. Some students may be hesitant to share their experiences if they do not conform to the perceived “norms.” Seek out resources and support within your school personnel for help in designing what is appropriate to communicate with your class.

Ask students as a class to brainstorm a list of all the positive characteristics of healthy and unhealthy behaviors in relationships. This could include face-to-face and online etiquette.

After compiling this list have students reflect in writing using these prompts:

• What do you value in relationships?
• How do you want to be treated in a relationship?

If helpful, students can choose one or more kinds of relationships to write about, including family, friends, acquaintances or romantic partners. If you’ve never had a romantic partner—meaning someone you’ve dated or have been sexually active with—what do you imagine would be important to you?

Explain to students that while each of us gets to decide what we want and need in a relationship, there are some common characteristics and values that all healthy relationships share.  Organize students into small discussion groups of equal genders to discuss and engage with the content.

Healthy Characteristics

Ask each student to select one statement below that most reflects their values and one that least reflects their values about a healthy relationship. Each of these statements is a positive expression of healthy relationships; there is no “right” answer to choose. This exercise is designed to encourage students to recognize their own emerging values.

A healthy relationship . . .

_____is characterized by communication, respect, sharing, trust, humor and respect of personal boundaries including personal property and online privacy.

_____should be fun and should have more good times than bad.

_____is based on the belief that each person is equal and that decision making in the relationship is also shared equally.

_____ if it is sexual, should always be consensual.

_____allows each person the freedom to be themselves.

_____should be satisfying and should support individual growth.

_____is based upon mutual respect and means not only giving respect to a partner (or friend or family member) but also showing respect for oneself.

Unhealthy Characteristics

It is also important for students to be able to identify unhealthy, or even abusive characteristics in relationships. Explain to students that while relationships all generally start out with good intentions, conflicts and disagreements occur and individuals in relationships can sometimes develop or act out unhealthy habits. As they prepare to analyze scenes from Audrie & Daisy it is important for students to have the vocabulary to describe and identify unhealthy characteristics. Read these four areas aloud to your students, clarifying terms and answering any questions.

Emotional: making degrading comments, ignoring, isolating, controlling friendships or activities, threatening

Physical: slapping, pushing, punching

Sexual: unwanted touching, forced or coerced sex

Financial: taking or withholding money, controlling spending

(Extended Activity for high school students)

In addition to this small group work, older students who have thought about or been in more intimate relationships may find this Healthy Relationship Quiz to be insightful and helpful as well as exploring and discussing these online resources. Ask students to discuss new insights and information they learn from these sites about establishing healthy online relationships.

Break the Cycle provides resources for learning about healthy online relationships

Circle of 6 is an app that helps create healthy communities by encouraging young people to identify six friends and trusted adults they can reach at a touch of a button to give their location and ask for help or support.

Safe BAE is the organization established by Daisy and Delaney to support survivors of sexual assault.

That’s Not Cool Toolkit for raising awareness about teen dating abuse prevention.

The handful of scenes from Audrie & Daisy for this lesson shine a spotlight on different kinds of relationships. Because of the number of scenes included, we have included quotes from the segments provided to emphasize and illustrate the range of relationships represented in the film and, if helpful, provide another instructional tool.

After students watch and read the quotes from each scene, spend time discussing what they notice about the characteristics they saw in each segment.

Amanda and Audrie

5:14 – 5:55

“She was one of my only true friends……We were kind of like an inseparable pair throughout middle school, so…there was not a week where we didn’t go to each other’s houses at least once.” – Amanda

Paige and Daisy

25:00 – 26:00

“I met Paige when I was about nine or 10. We kind of had the same dry sense of humor. We were kind of the weird kids.  Almost like the outcasts.  She was basically my best friend.  So, since I really trusted her, I thought like…we could try drinking alcohol together.” – Daisy

Charlie, Nick and Cole

33:45 – 35:13

41:30 – 42:45

“Daisy’s phone was in the yard face down, in the snow.  One boot was next to it, another boot was like, 10 feet away. I dried the phone off on my pant leg, and I started going through it. . . and the first name I saw on there was Matty B. And I knew, I freaking knew, that was, that was Matt Barnett.… I knew that that was something I wouldn’t have put past Matt. To try to have sex with my sister.  But the fact that Nick and Cole were considered two of my best friends and Jordan, like, my teammate. Like, I saw that guy, I wrestled that guy every single day. Like, how hard would it have been for Jordan to text me and say, why is your sister at Matt’s? But he didn’t. Nick didn’t. Cole didn’t. Monday, we went to school…And it was 180 from that Friday. The Friday before. It was one school divided. It was weird because I always sat at a table filled with people. Like, my teammates, people I thought were my friends.  I had absolutely nobody. No one.  I was one of the athletes. I was all-conference and all-district in sports. And once all that happened, that was all taken from me in an instant. I was now known as Daisy’s brother.” – Charlie

Charlie and his Little League

01:20:51 – 01:23:12

“I don’t think I ever thought about teaching them greater life lessons until I had heard a couple boys making comments about a girl. And I said……all right, we’re having a powwow now. And I circled everybody up. And I was like, here’s the thing guys. I’m here to teach you baseball. But this isn’t the kind of stuff I accept. This isn’t what I’m about. If it’s what you’re about, that’s fine, but that’s not what we are going to be about. And you’re more than welcome to take yourself out of here. After that one incident, something clicked. It really did click. I don’t look to be their father or anything. But I thought, I want to be part of something bigger than myself. And maybe I can kind of help them along. I really just enjoy watching them grow. Because in the process, they help me. They teach me a lot more about myself and how I was at that age. And I guess, I really start to understand a lot more.”

– Charlie

Daisy and Delaney

01:14:47 – 01:15:34

“Finally meeting Daisy, I learned . . .that you know, uh, it’s– it was a reassurance to me that I’m not alone. . . .This is a semicolon Daisy tattooed on me. And it basically is a reminder to myself that my story’s never over. And that, just like a sentence, you know, like, when you’re writing a sentence or typing a sentence, the semicolon means like, you know, that’s not the end.” – Delaney

Ask students to choose one relationship in their life that would fit their criteria of a healthy relationship. Ask them to list the qualities of this relationship they find to be positive and write one story that recalls a favorite memory or experience of this relationship.

As a final reflection, have students review their written responses from each of the “Respond” sections of the lessons and create a personal pledge for themselves in response to this unit. Their pledge could be a comparative piece weighing the pros and cons of sharing personal information or photos over social media. It could be a commitment to the ways they can intervene if they find themselves in situations where someone is in need of help. Or strategies to raise awareness around sexual assault prevention in their family, with their friends or at school. The pledge does not have to be in a written format but can be a piece of art, spoken word poem, digital story, video or other form of creative expression.

There are also numerous advocacy organizations working towards change at all levels. Students may find inspiration and connections by exploring and connecting to many of these organizations as they decide on the format for their pledge.

Here are several directly tied to Audrie & Daisy.

Coaching Boys Into Men

Futures Without Violence

PAVE (Promoting Awareness/Victim Empowerment)

Safe BAE (Before Anyone Else)

ThatsNotCool.com

Over time we hope “The Audrie & Daisy Project” pledges can be collected in a gallery on www.audrieanddaisy.com and serve to inspire and remind us that each individual step towards prevention matters and it begins in very personal ways.

ⁱ http://startstrong.futureswithoutviolence.org/why-middle-school-matters/. Retrieved August 22, 2016.