New to DGS this year, Personal Safety P.E. class is an untraditional program that teaches students self-defense skills while also enveloping women empowerment.

This class has a distinct weekly schedule. To start the week off, on Mondays students have a classroom day where they create a safe environment by talking about topics to aid in building confidence. These days are designed to forge classroom discussion and learn from others’ experiences.

Wednesdays and Fridays are designated to physical fitness days. Wednesdays are geared towards improving cardiovascular endurance while Fridays are a reward of either yoga or a body bar workout.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are skills days. Students learn the defensive moves that are necessary to protect themselves in any threatening situation.

Personal Safety P.E. teacher Lindsay DeGulio describes her goal for these two days.

“The statistics are out there that this unfortunately does happen where girls are put in vulnerable situations in many different types of ways, and there is a way that they can stand up for themselves, defend themselves, and make them feel stronger,” DeGulio said.

While practicing self-defense, DeGulio will always refer to her students as warriors, not victims.

Senior Jessica Prete would recommend this class to others.

“It’s fun learning the new defense moves and trying them out on friends too,” Prete said.

She also feels confident in defending herself after taking this class. Prete describes the class environment as a “different atmosphere” created by the untraditional focus of the program.

“I feel like these classroom days [Mondays] are not very beneficial, so that would be my only critique,” Prete said.

Personal Safety is a class tailored towards women, but that does not exclude men from signing up. Senior Kevin Wenskunas is one of two boys in his Personal Safety gym class.

“I do understand that this is a class that is more so geared towards women, but the thing is that it also doesn’t mean there’s no takeaway for me. Like today in class talking about bullying: it’s an everyone issue,” Wenckunas said.

He feels as though there is no detriment to his physical education experience even though men are a minority of the class.

This class develops a different atmosphere for P.E. leaders too. Senior Marie Smazil chose to lead for this class to gain some useful information before heading for college.

“Leaders [for the class] are a lot more hands-on and participating,” Smazil said.

She is more interactive with the students and can create stronger bonds with them.

“I can see that this class has become a safe space for many, and I’m interested to learn more,” Smazil said.

DeGulio explains that after completing this class, all of the students are entered into the RAD (Rape Aggression Defense System) database and they can take more classes to further their self-defense knowledge if they wish.

“There are six different classes on the RAD database,” DeGulio said.

This semester DeGulio is the only teacher of the class, but next semester P.E. teacher Julie Jur will also be teaching this program. They are the only two certified.

For the future, DeGulio hopes to get more teachers certified and to expand the program.

She also hopes to get a guest speaker who is a survivor of an attack to come into the classroom and share his/her experiences with the class.