May 4, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to close Illinois schools for the rest of the academic year. This unexpected disruption to education has hit students, teachers, and parents hard. Before this decision was announced however, CAASE’s Prevention Education Team started making plans in case they couldn’t be in classrooms for a while. They reached out to teachers to ask if our programs could be useful in a remote format. The response was a resounding “Yes!”. Our educators worked quickly to adapt our popular sexual harm prevention workshops to an e-learning platform.

Using Chicago Public Schools’ virtual learning guidelines, CAASE Prevention Educators recorded workshops and created new worksheets designed to meet the learning objectives we always focus on. Our new materials allow teachers and their students to remotely access the lessons we routinely present during in-person prevention programming. “We are committed to helping teachers during this difficult time,” says CAASE Prevention Manager, Shalini Mirpuri. “We’ve made it easy for schools to continue providing students with information about healthy relationships, consent, and sexual violence—even when they can’t gather in the classroom.

Within 48 hours of offering our new e-learning option to schools that had to cancel in-person programs, we had 4 schools requesting the materials for 352 students! That number has continued to grow. “We are so encouraged to see how helpful these resources can be for teachers,” says Ryan Spooner, a CAASE Prevention Educator. “We hope these lessons reach every student we planned to meet with this year and many more.” The materials can be used by any high school, regardless of whether they worked with CAASE in the past. 

Mirpuri recognizes that remote education isn’t ideal and that teachers may not feel confident in fielding questions about sexual harm and gender. She considered all this in planning the remote lessons. “We built engaging prompts into the workshops so that students have time to pause and think about what’s being presented. We also include links to videos that supplement each lesson for those that want to dive deeper.” Because the topics CAASE covers always spark great questions from students, the team also set up a system for students to anonymously ask CAASE’s expert staff questions. The prevention team has plans to share the most asked questions and answers with even more people on our social media and website—because our educators know that if one student is wondering something it’s likely that others are, too.

CAASE educators are looking forward to the day they can visit schools again. We know that will not be for the rest of this school year so, in the meantime, we are making sure teachers and students can continue important conversations about ending sexual harm. If you or a school staff member you know is interested in providing CAASE’s e-learning materials to students, please email smirpuri@caase.org for more information.

CAASE is able to develop new workshops that are responsive to students’ experiences and needs because people like you support our Prevention Education Programs. The Race for CAASE team is a big part of that! Each year, runners, walkers, and donors raise thousands of dollars to make sure we can continue to empower teens to become allies against sexual harm. You’re invited to join us as a runner or a walker, in person this fall or virtually at your leisure! Find the details here.

We also thank the Greer Foundation, Robert M. Angell Foundation, and an Anonymous fund of CICF for their support of CAASE’s prevention work.