Schools
Local Man Seeks to Educate Students on Tech Safety
With his program, Always Connected, Sgt. Thomas Rich is trying to teach students about the dangers of sexting, cyberbullying, and more.
In an ever-evolving, tech-centric world, cyberbullying is becoming an increasingly serious issue for today's youths.
One local man is doing his best to put an end to it. With his program, Always Connected, Sgt. Thomas Rich is working to educate groups of all ages about the dangers of cyberbullying and sexting, and ways to protect your internet safety. Sgt. Rich says of his cause,
“Sexting is becoming the new epidemic, and it’s really going to be out of control.”
In his 15 years as a police officer, Sgt. Rich specialized in Internet Safety, and spent 10 of those years as a DARE officer. As a result, he became acutely aware of sexting as a rapidly growing problem. In 2008, Sgt. Rich decided to do something about it, and created an informative presentation about sexting.
The project, currently known as Always Connected, has evolved extensively over the past three years. Sgt. Rich started it with a partner as Generation Text, a project that was mainly focused on the perils of sexting. However, as other issues became prominent, Generation Text started taking on cyberbullying. When his founding partner took off with the idea, Sgt. Rich decided to overhaul the program and has since been running it alone. As when he began, Sgt. Rich covers the personal and legal consequences of sexting in the presentations, but over time, it has evolved to include cyberbullying and internet safety, especially in regards to social networking sites and how they can create problems for college and job applicants.
“I don’t say to kids, ‘Don’t use Facebook,’” Sgt. Rich says. Instead, he advocates using privacy settings to stay protected. He takes the time to educate students about the constantly changing settings, and how to use them best.
In the past 2-3 years, Sgt. Rich has done 150 presentations at various schools and for various groups. And it's not just students. He has also done his presentation at professional development trainings for teachers, administrators, youth workers, police officers, and volunteers. As of July, he already had 30 presentations booked for the coming school year. Sgt. Rich has done presentations as near as Summit, and as far as Bronx, NY. Sgt. Rich customizes the presentation for each school, by contacting schools beforehand to find out their priorities.
Sgt. Rich says that he gets through to students by making Always Connected different from a typical assembly. Each presentation runs about 1 ½ to 2 hours, and they are very interactive. They include lot of videos and some relevant case work from the past. Sgt. Rich says that he tries to keep them fast-paced and energetic, in order to keep students’ attention:
“I do it in a different way... I’m crazy. I dance, I stand on chairs, that’s just what I do.”
Meanwhile, the students aren’t the only ones learning from the presentations.
“Every presentation I do, I learn something,” Sgt. Rich said. “There’s always a group of kids that come up that either share an experience of a sexting issue that they weren’t sure how to deal with, or a bullying issue.”
He cited a specific experience where after a presentation, one boy spoke to him after a presentation and told Sgt. Rich about his own past with bullying, which led to an attempted suicide.
“Kids like me from the middle school need this type of information and need this type of assembly to give us the answers of how to deal with it, because I didn’t know how,” the boy told Sgt. Rich.
Sgt. Rich is receiving attention for Always Connected beyond just the local scope. He appeared on Good Morning America in March, and has also appeared on Nancy Grace. With buzz building, all eyes are on Sgt. Rich and his plans for the future.
One of his plans is to develop separate presentations for different topics, in order to focus on each one in depth. Ideas for those include a presentation on bullying, and one which he calls “Facebook 101” where he would teach parents how to use Facebook and supervise their children’s use of it. He is also looking to expand to the ever-growing list of social networking sites, including Tumblr, ChatRoulette, and FourSquare.
Sgt. Rich knows that this is not a problem that will disappear soon, which is why he wants to educate as many students as possible.
“Technology isn’t going away, and, for the most part, cyberbullying isn’t going away.”
