SMRC Safety Lessons Next Week

OUR COMMUNITY
OUR MISSION
It takes all of us to inspire a culture of healing and empowerment. 
 
Dear Parents and Families,                                                                                                                  May 2, 2025
 
My name is Liza Cooney, and I coordinate the Youth Violence Prevention Education program with San Miguel Resource Center. As part of this program, we visit all Telluride students in grades K-12 and bring lessons focus on friendship skills, emotion regulation, and safety. These workshops are designed to reinforce the social-emotional learning already being taught at the school. So far this year, I joined school counselor Tracy Farmer to bring lessons about growth mindsets and resilience. 
 
Importantly, I am also writing to give a heads up about the last lesson of the year I plan to bring to 1st graders, which is scheduled for Monday, May 5th. We will discuss safe vs. unsafe touch and what to do if someone touches us in an unsafe (inappropriate) way. If you would like to opt your child out of these lessons, please email TES principal Kelly Treinen at ktreinen@telluride.k12.co.us. If you would like additional resources in speaking with your child about this topic, I’m happy to share suggestions! My email is education@smrcco.org. 
 
Details On Our May Safety Lesson
This lesson focuses on caring for our bodies. It teaches students the difference between safe and unsafe touch, and what to do if someone we thought we trusted touches us in an unsafe way. We begin this lesson with a fun sing-along of “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” to get students moving. We then go over various ways that we care for our bodies (brush teeth, wash hands, sunscreen, water, wear helmets etc.). We emphasize that we do these things for our body every day because our bodies deserve to be protected and respected.
 
From there, we explain that part of respecting our bodies and other people’s bodies is to only touch our bodies in safe ways. We then define safe vs. unsafe touch. We define safe touch as touch that makes us feel warm, calm and protected, happy and light (e.g. a hug, a high five, or a parent braiding our hair). Meanwhile, we will define unsafe touch as touch that physically hurts our body (e.g. hitting, kicking etc.), or as touch that makes us feel confused or icky – including somebody touching our private areas. We consider “private areas” to be the areas covered by a bathing suit. We remind students that “private” means “just for us”, and no one has a right to touch or look at our private areas because it is unsafe/inappropriate.
 
Of course, we know that doctors/caregivers do sometimes need to examine or even touch a child’s private area, and that can still be safe. To help students understand this nuance, we focus on “body warning signs” that something feels unsafe. 
 
Some of the specific “body warning signs” we review with students include: 

• An “uh oh” feeling
• Stomach feels queasy
• Fast heartbeat
• Face feels hot
• Fast breathing
• As one student once described, “your soul wants to run away but your body feels stuck”
• Our mind keeps thinking about it over and over
• Muscles feel tense
• We feel frozen
• Eyes are wide open

 
We remind students that if they feel any of these sensations, their body is trying to protect them, and it is alerting them that they need to talk to an adult. To emphasize this point, we introduce “Big and Little Potatoes”. Little Potatoes are little problems that a child could solve on their own. These are usually conflicts with friends or frustrating moments where safety is not as risk (e.g. someone is hogging the swing at recess). Big Potatoes, on the other hand, are problems that require adult help. These problems are serious because there is a threat to physical or emotional safety. We remind students that unsafe touches, especially touching private areas, are automatically Big Potatoes. We know we have a Big Potato on our hands when our body warning signs are going off! 
 
Listening to our “body warning signs” is especially important because while children know that hitting/kicking is unsafe because it is painful, sexual abuse does not always feel painful to children. So, we don’t use pain as the only test as to whether a touch is okay or not. If a touch is painful, then yes it’s unsafe; but if a touch activates our body warning signs and makes us feel confused, icky, or panicky in some way, then that touch is also unsafe.
 
 
Talking to an adult
We tell students that any unsafe or confusing touch can be discussed with a trusted adult. Adults will help kids determine if the touch was unsafe, or if it was more so just embarrassing (e.g doctor needed to check a private part). We remind students that if they try talking to one adult about an unsafe situation and that adult doesn’t help them feel better about it, we encourage them to try talking with a different adult who could possibly help in a different way. 
 
We conclude the lesson by reminding students that most adults are safe and loving, and want to protect children. We will help students create a list of many of the adults in their lives who they can talk to about body warning signs, unsafe situations, or secrets. Thank you for being one of those trusted adults for your child. 
 
About the program: SMRC’s Youth Violence Prevention Education program aims to promote social-emotional skills and reduce rates of youth violence through classroom instruction and small lunch groups. We use an evidence-based curriculum to deliver monthly lessons to all students on the topics of safe and healthy decision-making, resiliency, relationship skills, and more. These lessons augment the existing social-emotional education that TES provides but with a special focus on safety and violence prevention.
 
Thanks so much,
Liza Cooney
 
Liza Cooney
Prevention Educator
San Miguel Resource Center 
Telluride Office: 970.728.5842 ext. 2#
24 Hour Helpline: 1.844.816.3915
education@smrcco.org