Three Berkshire County high schools are among nearly 100 taking part in a statewide effort to prevent domestic violence among young people.Pittsfield and Taconic high schools in Pittsfield and Drury High in North Adams have been selected to take part in the anti-violence initiative run through the Massachusetts Attorney General office’s and supported by the charitable arm of the New England Patriots. The training will be carried out by the Mentors in Violence Prevention at Northeastern University. Attorney General Maura Healey announced the effort in September.
“One in three people have experienced physical, emotional, sexual or verbal violence in a relationship,” Healey said. “Every nine seconds in this country a woman is assaulted or beaten, making domestic violence the leading cause of injury to women in America.”
MVP is run out of Northeastern’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The center’s executive director Dan Lebowitz says MVP teaches violence prevention strategies aimed at creating a community of wellness and collective responsibility. In accordance with its sports theme, he says the program uses playbooks featuring relationship scenarios with a variety response options.
“The curriculum doesn’t mandate behavior,” Lebowitz said. “It doesn’t say ‘Do this and do that.’ It facilitates conversations that bring people to a cognitive development about collective goodness and wellness means.”
Two adults from each of the selected schools will attend a regional training institute. Lebowitz says the hope is to have the trainees return and teach the program at their respective schools.
“We want the training to turn into a sustainable program in each school so that it becomes part of the environment of that school,” he said. “And that the environment and the pipeline from freshmen to seniors is one of positivity, understanding what healthy relationships look like, how to recognize egregious behavior and have a toolkit to be able to intervene in situations safely or create a dynamic where positivity is the norm rather than something that stands out because it’s not really part of normative culture.”
Every person who delivers the curriculum was a college, pro or Olympic athlete. The program has been delivered to Major League Baseball and the military. Lebowitz says sports is used as a vehicle for the curriculum because it can be a common denominator for people of varying racial, religious and sexual identities. He says athletics is also a leadership platform, especially in high school.
“Part of curriculum is really understanding the construct of manhood and creating a mindset around it where it doesn’t just include toughness on a field,” Lebowitz said. “It includes kindness, compassion and respect for women, difference and sexual orientation. Things that people wouldn’t normally think of as comprehensive manhood because we haven’t been acculturated in that sense. The curriculum is designed to acculturate people in that sense and create a new dynamic and definition of what manhood and the responsibilities of manhood are.”
The program’s second phase, which starts in the fall, includes more in-depth training for parents, students and staff at 30 high schools working with local domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy organizations.
