Page 43 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9-12: Health and Physical Education, 2015 - revised

Personal Safety and Injury Prevention. Learning in this content area is intended not only to reduce adolescents’ injuries but also to equip them to recognize, assess, and manage potentially dangerous situations. Personal safety topics focus on developing skills to identify, prevent, and resolve issues in areas such as bullying, peer assault, child abuse, harassment, and violence in relationships. These skills can be applied in both face-to-face situations and online environments. Injury prevention topics focus on areas such as
road safety (including pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicle safety); concussion prevention, identification, and management; seasonal safety rules; sun and UV protection; home safety; fire safety; safety when volunteering and working; and first aid.
The expectations address the knowledge and skills needed to reduce safety risks at home, at school, and in the community. Risk taking is a natural and important part of maturation for students, especially adolescents. Having the confidence to take risks
is essential to enjoying and achieving in both learning and life. Having the ability to manage risk for both themselves and others, however, is essential to physical safety
and mental and emotional well-being. To develop their risk management skills, students will engage in skill-building activities and thoughtful discussion about ways to minimize harm in real-life situations.
Students will also become familiar with the support available to them within their families as well as through agencies and services that provide support and help within the community. However, knowledge alone is not enough: students require the skills necessary to respond appropriately to situations that threaten their personal safety and well-being. Living skills such as self-advocacy, conflict resolution, anger management, and decision-making skills, as well as the ability to use assertiveness, resistance, and refusal techniques, will help them respond safely and effectively to these situations.
Substance Use, Addictions, and Related Behaviours. Education is one critical strategy that can help prevent substance abuse. Parents, guardians, educators, and society in general all have key roles to play in educating students about substance use, misuse, and abuse.
Alcohol and tobacco are the drugs most readily available to Ontario students, and smoking is the primary cause of preventable illnesses, disabilities, and premature deaths in Canada. The learning expectations related to substance use and abuse respond to these facts by focusing on an understanding of the effects of drugs – prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs, illicit drugs, tobacco, and alcohol – and the consequences of their use. This knowledge is integrated with the development of a variety of living skills that help students make and maintain healthy choices.
This strand also addresses addictions and related behaviours that can lead to addictions or compulsive behaviour, such as online gambling or excessive screen time. It includes discussion of the relationship between substance use and abuse and mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Students are made aware
of support systems that can help them find healthy, substance-free alternatives for coping with stressful situations.
THE PROGRAM IN HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION
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