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Return to topThe year is 1969 and violence threatens to erupt at San Francisco State University.
Counseling professor Amy Hittner, then a graduate student in the department where she teaches today, is caught in the middle of a student civil-rights protest that has deteriorated into a riot.
Faced with an advancing wall of police, whose metal helmets and heavy batons inspire fear rather than safety, Hittner has two choices: remain where she stands and risk a violent encounter or move aside and let them pass. A sage woman even at that age, the longtime professor chooses the latter.
"There must have been a hundred of them. I was young, and they were very imposing," recalls Hittner, a petite, 50ish brunette whose slight Brooklyn accent reveals her New York upbringing. "I knew they wouldn't stop for anything, so I simply dove into the bushes in front of J. Paul Leonard Library."
But Hittner is no shrinking violet. When it comes to tackling the issue of violence, she is a formidable force, particularly when it comes to protecting youth. Through an innovative teacher-training program called SafeStartÑwhich she developed in 1994 with an initial grant from the U.S. Department of EducationÑhundreds of early-childhood educators, child-care workers and parents have been trained in violence-related counseling and prevention techniques. The goal, she says, is to give children from at-ri sk communities the chance to start life in a "pro-social" environment safe from harm and the damaging influences of violence.
"Children live with violence every day," says Hittner, who during her 18 years as a counseling professor at SF State has been chair of the Department of Counseling and associate dean of the College of Health and Human Services. "It's in the media, on the streets and in their homes. While we can't always control where it's coming from, we can have a significant impact on how it affects them."
SafeStart is a 12-unit certificate program offered jointly through SF State and six Bay Area community colleges. Hittner took an interdisciplinary approach when developing the curriculum, collaborating with faculty from the departments of Counseling and Early Childhood Education.
Participants study the prevalence of violence and its impact on the well-being of children and adults from diverse communities. They're taught observation and intervention techniques to help children express their feelings. They learn how to use art, role-playing and storytelling to teach children about conflict resolution and anger management. Family sessions are offered outside the classroom to encourage communication and stress-management skills, and child-care administrators learn methods for workin g with staff and parents from diverse backgrounds.
Hittner, who spent 10 years as a counselor and teacher in some of San Francisco's most violent schools before joining SF State in 1982, can attest to the critical need for counseling at an early age. In 1975, while earning her doctorate in counseling psychology from U.C. Berkeley, she even testified about school violence during a special senate hearing in Washington, D.C.
"The most violent and destructive teenagers are usually troubled kids who have had problems from an early age," says Hittner. "If counseling started at the elementary school level, as it should, these problems would have been identified, the child and parents would have learned how to communicate, and perhaps this child may have taken a very different path. To me, that's why SafeStart is so important."
After six years of support from a chain of grants, SafeStart has succeeded in more ways than Hittner and her collaborators could have imagined. A three-year research project she co-wrote in 1996 to assess SafeStart's success wrapped up this summer. Initial results, to be released in November, are overwhelmingly positive. The program, now institutionalized at the community college level, no longer requires grant funding, and the state legislature recently added SafeStart's violence prevention coursework as an option for fulfilling requirements of the Early Childhood Education permit. Additionally, the city of San Francisco-in a move Hittner says reflects the city's confidence in the program-co-opted the name SafeStart to create its own multi-agency violence prevention and intervention program. Not surprisingly, Hittner and one of her collaborators, SF State faculty member Sue Wayne, have been asked to participate in the project.
Hittner half jokes that education and violence are double strands running through her life, indelibly connected. But it's this polarity that drives her to create programs such as SafeStart and numerous others she's initiated during her career.
"When I was growing up, school was a safe haven, a place to go," recalls Hittner, with a clear note of nostalgia. "To be able to create that for kids today, wouldn't that be something?"
-Merrik Bush-Pirkle
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