Relationship Education Class for Teens Offered at Bethany Reformed Church

REDLANDS – Char Kamper, a psychology teacher at Redlands High School, will lead a five-week relationship education class for high school students beginning April 9 at Bethany Reformed Church in Redlands.

The class will meet from 6 to 7:30 p.m., and is offered for teens who are interested in learning about friendship and dating behaviors that make a difference for success or failure, even later in life.

“So many teenagers today act as if they have it all together when it comes to understanding what’s going on with dating relationships, but when things don’t work out well, it doesn’t take very long to discover there’s a lot more to know,” Kamper said.

Kamper introduced two of the first relationship education programs of their kind 11 years ago, for use in schools, community outreach programs, teen pregnancy prevention programs, after-school programs and juvenile authority.

The “Connections: Dating and Emotions” and “Connections: Relationships and Marriage” curricula were written to introduce teens to concepts for building healthy relationships with friends and parents and when dating.

“The program topics are based on solid techniques for marriage and family education,” Kamper said. “I have many adults who come to me and ask for a workbook for themselves when they see what their child is learning. Initially, I was told that relationship education couldn’t be done. Now the thinking is, we have to do it for teens, any possible way.”

Kamper has written two more programs for young people in the past five years: “Being Yourself,” a middle-school program; and “One, Two I Do,” a program for faith-based youth, co-written with her daughter Shana, also a teacher at RHS. “One, Two I Do,” sponsored by the University of Chicago School of Divinity, teaches positive relationships and marriage skills from a theological perspective.

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