WITS is a program created by educators for educators to help children prevent victimization, such as bullying, discrimination and lateral violence. The WITS program gives children aged 4 to 12 the tools to manage conflicts and empowers them to make safe, positive choices within their community.
WITS is an acronym based on these four strategies:
Walk away
Ignore
Talk it out
Seek help
WITS provides students, their teachers, parents and caregivers, and community leaders with a common language to discuss conflict & peer victimization. Children proudly exclaim “I use my WITS” as they engage in positive, pro-social behaviours. Proven to be effective and flexible to implement, WITS fits easily with other school routines.
Your first year of the WITS Program:
- When first rolled out, educators and school staff members to log into our site to review the online training. It takes less than an hour and is included with your subscription.
- Materials:
- Administration reviews the contents of the WITS Core Module, placing posters and banners in common areas, place the set of books (WITS is literacy-based, using stories that align with WITS strategies and SEL themes) and detailed implementation guide in an accessible place, and other items in the office.
- Each homeroom teacher reviews the contents of their WITS Classroom Module: read the easy-implementation guide, hang up posters in their room, give rulers and take home cards to students, and give out “I use my WITS” stickers to students when introducing the program.
- The school should have an assembly to let everyone know the WITS strategies: Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out, Seek help. You can show one of our videos from the subscriber section of our web site, give out “I use my WITS” stickers, etc.
- Once a month, read a book aligned with the WITS themes – these are in the school’s WITS Core Module which is usually kept in a common area. We have over 50 lesson plans that correspond to WITS Pick books, all on the subscriber section of our web site.
- When students exhibit positive behaviours, or use their WITS, give them a reward sticker, found in each WITS Classroom Module. Also, remind students to use the WITS strategies to manage conflict and victimization.
- Find other ways to tell families that your school is using the WITS strategies: on your web site, when families gather at the school, via newsletters, etc.
- If you can, bring in a guest speaker / community leader to talk about the WITS strategies.
- Wrap up the year with a quick staff talk about how they taught the strategies.
For more details on program elements, see the Subscription page.
WITS has been started in over 1500 schools worldwide. To deliver WITS, Subscribe your school and purchase one Core Module and for each classroom a Classroom Module. Want to know more? Let’s set up a live video call; contact us info@witsprogram.ca.
Educators have told us
“Kids reach all these outcomes, not just social responsibility outcomes. Because it’s literature-based they’re addressing all these other outcomes as well.”
“It’s not a huge undertaking; not an addition to what we already have to do when we feel overwhelmed and have to do all this curriculum stuff… it fits right in.”
“I think that the teachers buy in to it, in that we really like the common language so that everybody knows what the question is: “Have you used your WITS?” The kids all know what that means. The teachers know what that means. The parents even have quoted to me, “Well, he used his WITS today” and so on.”
One school’s experience CBC News story In 2012, this school in Little Pine First Nation, Saskatchewan was having concerns, so turned to WITS.
What students say about WITS… see ‘What kids say about WITS‘ , a 4 minute video featuring kids in public, middle and high schools.
It’s a very natural fit for me to incorporate WITS into other things we are doing. It’s very useful to use daily in our classroom.
