BT Educates Students & Parents about Healthy Choices

To serve our students’ intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual developmental needs, we not only have a guidance counselor in every school division, but have also instituted programs throughout the school that address the issues and challenges our students confront in today’s complicated world:

• Teaching mindfulness practices to our PreSchool and Lower School students for improved emotional balance, focus and self-regulation;
• Safety Kid, a Lower School partnership between the school, parents and students that teaches the ABCs of safety — Ask for Help, Bring a Friend, Check First, and Do Tell;
• Beineinu, the Middle School’s comprehensive health and wellness program; and
• High School Health and Safety series, including two recent High School programs that addressed the risks of distracted and drunk driving, vaping, and sexting, described below:

Eleventh Grade: The Dangers of Distracted and Drunk Driving
Despite the warnings, statistics indicate that there is still a lot of work to do in order to prevent car crashes caused by drunk and distracted drivers. Eleventh grade parents and students heard from several professionals in the community who deal with those consequences every day.
Baltimore County Police Department’s Officer Larry Stallings described his experiences during his 23 years on the force in dealing with the repercussions of distracted driving, including the financial and legal ramifications for those involved. Next, University of Maryland Shock Trauma Violence and Injury Prevention Program Coordinators Mandy Remmell and Bella Chant offered a powerful presentation that included the process, procedures and costs associated with receiving medical attention at Shock Trauma.

For most, the most impactful part of the evening was hearing Kyle, a young man who shared the story of his avoidable near-death in a car crash when he was 17 years old. Kyle suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him disabled. The program concluded with facilitated group discussions between parents and students.

Vaping and Sexting: Growing Teen Crises
Johns Hopkins Medicine Director of Interventional Pulmonology and BT alum parent Dr. David Feller-Kopman explained the dangers of tobacco use and the newest public health crisis — vaping — to parents of BT ninth and tenth grade students. Greg Smith, American Kidney Fund Chief Information Office and expert on children and technology safety, described measures and safeguards parents can implement on their home and personal devices to keep teens from visiting sites, sending, receiving inappropriate content.

Future High School Health and Safety programs will include a discussion about healthy relationships with professional from CHANA and the One Love Program for seniors, and mental health awareness discussion for the entire High School.

We owe it to our children to make ourselves knowledgeable about the issues they face, and become realistic about solutions to help address them. We appreciate your partnership in ensuring our students’ physical, emotional and spiritual growth.