D.A.R.E. grows with the times

TEN SLEEP – The D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program that began in the early 1980s is a much different program today. Not only are students taught how to say no to drugs they are taught life lessons that will help them in every avenue of their lives.

“The D.A.R.E. program now is completely different than the D.A.R.E. program when I was a child. I only remember talking about say no, say no, say no, and that drugs were bad, which they are, but that’s not only what the D.A.R.E. program is about anymore,” D.A.R.E. instructor Washakie County Sheriff Deputy Colleen Borovatz said. “Yes, we still teach about drugs but that’s not only what we teach and I think that that’s fabulous,” she added.

The program teaches students about choices and the results of a choice that a student makes. “We talk about making good decisions and bad decisions and the consequences of the decisions that you make. We discuss what the possible consequences can be and the students share stories. The D.A.R.E. workbooks that the kids use have little situations and stories in it for the kids to evaluate and go through to figure out what the problem is. They make a choice and decide what their options are and decide if their choice was a bad choice or a good choice and why it was a good or bad choice. All this is written down in their workbooks,” Borovatz said. “I tell the students stories about things that I’ve done or mistakes that I have made and the consequences I’ve had to deal with because even as adults we make mistakes and have consequences. We explain that to them, that kids aren’t the only ones that make mistakes, adults make mistake too,” she added.

Communication is another subject that the D.A.R.E. program covers. “Our lesson today, in Ten Sleep, was about confident communication and how we want the kids to use confident communication. We don’t want them to be demanding, we don’t want them to be unsure of themselves. We explain what unsure is and what confident communication looks like. I asked the kids to tell me who they think portrays confidence and a couple kids mentioned military people. They are right, military people exude confidence. It’s good that the kids can recognize what’s demanding, what’s unsure and what’s confident. And again situations are in the workbook for the kids to go through and decide what’s what,” Borovatz said. “Next week we are going to be talking about communicating effectively,” she added.

Stress is another subject for discussion. “One of our lessons is about stress, different signs of stress and how stress affects your body. Good ways to deal with stress and bad ways to deal with stress,” Borovatz said.

Peer pressure, which can include pressure to do anything that isn’t right such as drugs or shoplifting is another lesson. “We talk about peer pressure and responding to peer pressure and what peer pressure is. Peer pressure is everything from ‘here try this drug’ to ‘hey let’s skip math class today.’ They need to learn this stuff because this stuff goes clear into college where they have friends saying ‘let’s go party tonight’ and then they can’t get up to go to class the next morning. It’s something that helps them from fifth-grade where we start clear through their entire lives,” Borovatz explained.

Another lesson is about needing help and who the students can ask for help. “The kids do a help network page and they write down their name in the middle with everyone that they feel that they can talk to, whether its church people or parents, teachers, grandparents, other brothers and sisters, or friends around their name, the people that they feel that they can go to for help. During that same lesson we talk about different scenarios, such as if this was happening who would you go to talk to, who are you going to ask for help, so that they can relate to any given situation and who they would ask for help in the situation,” Borovatz said.

The D.A.R.E. program is a 10-week course that is taught to elementary and middle school students, fifth-grade for elementary school and seventh-grade for middle school in both Ten Sleep and Worland. “The elementary students have a graduation after completing the course and the course for the middle school students is a refresher course,” Borovatz said.

At the end of the course, the students are asked to write an essay about what they learned. “Once the kids have turned in all their reports they get up in front of the class and they do an oral report on D.A.R.E. and then the kids get to decide who they think has the best report. I take the top five reports back to the law enforcement center and I have the secretary, the sheriff and the chief of police read the essays and they pick the essay that they feel is the best. That person gets a medallion at the graduation and the essay is read to the parents,” Borovatz stated.

The D.A.R.E program is one of the organizations that received a portion of the Festival of Trees money. Their share of the $23,790 goes to the workbooks that are purchased every year, the pencils, erasers, D.A.R.E. T-shirts that the students receive at graduation and training for the instructors. “We also use the money for training, like when I went to the D.A.R.E. school in Salt Lake,” Borovatz said.