Healthy Relationships
Healthy relationships are at the core of developing and maintaining mentally healthy, equitable and caring learning environments. You can help students learn to understand and appreciate diverse perspectives and identities, to empathize with others, to listen, and to resolve conflict respectfully. Focusing on healthy relationship skills can benefit class culture and students' sense of belonging. To experience themselves as valued and connected members of an inclusive social environment, students need to be involved in healthy relationships with their peers, educators, and other members of the school community.
Elementary
- I See I Learn books feature simple stories that help young children learn the life skills they need to prepare for school. Each story focuses on a specific skill from one of four domains: Social, Emotional, Health and Safety, and Cognitive. Stories are modelled on real life situations and, just as in real life, often involve more than one skill.
- PREVNet | Canada's authority on bullying prevention is a national research and knowledge mobilization hub. PREVNet's free Healthy Relationships Training Module (HRTM) gives adults the training needed to help young people develop healthy social skills.
- Random Acts of Kindness Foundation has activities for bullying prevention that can be done as a whole school, or in classroom or small group settings.
- School Mental Health Ontario provides resources related to healthy relationship and friendship, including their Healthy Relationship Skills resource, that can be used in a classroom or small group setting.
- Second Step offers a free social-emotional well-being learning curriculum with a focus on classroom connectedness and friendship.
Secondary
- Canadian Kindness Leaders provides Teacher Resources for launching a kindness based project at your school.
- Canadian Red Cross provides a Healthy Youth Relationship program for teens that teaches the difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship.