Drug Abuse Resistance Education

 

Since 1992 youth throughout Trempealeau County have benefited from the D.A.R.E. program.  D.A.R.E. is a substance abuse prevention education program designed to equip elementary school children with skills for resisting peer pressure. 

 D.A.R.E. teaches children that popularity can be found in positive
behavior, that belonging need not require them to abandon their values, and that self-confidence and self-worth come from asserting themselves and resisting destructive temptations.  D.A.R.E. has recently added lessons on Cyber Bullying, Internet Safety, Prescription & Over-the-Counter Drugs, and other current events to assist in teaching these lessons. 

 As a uniformed officer, Deputy Kevin Ely will be in area classrooms on a weekly basis for ten weeks, stressing the importance of positive role models. D.A.R.E. provides law enforcement with an opportunity to develop a rapport with the students, promoting positive attitudes toward police and greater respect for the law. 

D.A.R.E. is set up as a teaching triangle – Police, Parents, and Teachers all working together.  The importance of the parent’s side of the teaching triangle cannot be stressed enough.  Teachers are with students each day during the school year and Deputy Ely sees them once a week during the D.A.R.E. curriculum, but parents are the most important role model a child will ever have in his/her life.  Deputy Ely will teach students the D.A.R.E. curriculum, but the life skills that are portrayed and reinforced by parents are the skills that most children learn to live by. 

 

 

For more information on drug abuse parents and children can visit www.dare.com or www.theantidrug.com .