Narrator:
As communities around the country are learning, the key to effective prevention is to use multiple strategies in multiple settings, toward achieving a common goal.

One particularly potent strategy is Education. This video focuses on Education strategies by examining Life Skills, one proven approach to school-based drug prevention. Life Skills education provides students with a variety of learning experiences that not only develop knowledge and attitudes but also skills that help young people make healthy decisions. While Life Skills education is a key element of effective school-based prevention programs, it is important to remember, that it works best when combined with other prevention strategies such as services for students and their parents and community-based efforts.

Evander French, Principal, McCall Middle School:
At the Middle School level so much is going on. These are years of transition. It’s not just intellectual growth, it’s physical, and moral and social and ethical and psychological. It’s all of those growth issues and if you are just dealing with academics you are missing the boat. We need to attend to their intellectual development but we need to attend to all of those other areas of growth.

Narrator:
Pretest results in this community indicated that sixth graders had strong anti-drug use norms with one exception. Twelve-year-old sixth graders did not demonstrate such strong anti-drug use norms for alcohol and marijuana. With this information, the school then considered the key factors which determined successful implementation of Life Skills Education programs.

Jan Keefe, Director of Health & Physical Education Winchester Public Schools:
First of course is money. Make sure you have your ducks in a row when it comes to finance. There are books to be bought, there are binders, and there is training to be done.

Dr. Mark Kerbel, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Winchester Public Schools:
I think this is exciting. And I think that you need to have a cheerleader, who is able to spell out a clear vision of where you want to go and what you want to accomplish. You need to bring people together to talk about what all the obstacles are, but more importantly to talk about what your goals are, what your vision is, what you want to accomplish, how you can implement this kind of program into the current program that you have in school.

Elizabeth Silva, Director, Winchester Substance Abuse Coalition, Life Skills Training Instructor:
I think in trying to implement this kind of strategy, it is important to include parents, teachers and students from the beginning. I think the buy-in has to be in, in all realms because it is such a commitment. If that doesn’t happen at the beginning it can really sidetrack the implementation.

Narrator:
There are indeed many key elements to consider when implementing a school-based prevention curriculum.

Narrator:
One of the most important factors that determines a programs’ success is the extent to which teachers are provided with both training and ongoing support in the content and methods of Life Skills education.

Narrator:
One program that uses this approach is the Life Skills Training program.

Elizabeth Silva:
Here have actually trained a total of 40 faculty members that include not only teachers who are teaching the program but counselors, teachers in other core subjects, special ed, ESL, in a way to incorporate some of the concepts in other areas in having the whole environment change. Saying listen here is the philosophy that we are going to be using for the foreseeable future. Where do you stand with it and having teachers who never ever actually get to teach this particular topic use it in their classroom and use the concepts and also understand and hopefully integrate some of the important key points like the modeling, and then everyone is familiar. And on an educational standpoint it is very important for students, especially at this age, in developmental stage, to see consistency. Then finally, I think paying attention to the teaching methods that are being used in the classroom. Be sure that the young people aren’t just filling out worksheets. Because it is about life skills for health concepts. That means it has to be integrated into their reality. You do that by using interactive teaching by facilitating instead of presenting and getting the students involved.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
Today we are going to focus on smoking biofeedback.

Elizabeth Silva:
One of the things that was very exciting for me in the classroom was to see the kids using some high level thinking skills. Doing more analyzing, doing more reflection and really taking challenges in responding to questions or situations and really putting their opinion out there whether they felt they were going to be right or wrong and that shows a comfort level.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
Does smoking really make you feel relaxed or does it increase anxiety? What’s the truth? We’re going to study that.

Elizabeth Silva:
One of the things that we are trying to do is to increase their cognitive skills, along with the behavioral skills so that they can actually pull off social resistance so that they can say ‘No’ to things and so that they can do some of that reflective thinking.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
We are going to look at the body being relaxed and the first thing we are going to do is we are going to look at what happens the second people smoke and take in what drug?

Elizabeth Silva:
As a teacher it really took a lot more work on my part in really thinking through the prep.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
Follow your thumb and go an inch and a half past your thumb and gently press down. What you are looking for is a light bump. That bump is your pulse.

Elizabeth Silva:
The lessons wouldn’t be as exciting or fun if I wasn’t prepared with the pulse meters for example.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
So that is the finger that you want to put on the button and you want to put your pointer finger on the other side.

Elizabeth Silva:
Not every kid will be able to learn how to take their own pulse manually. I need to teach them how to do that and then have a back-up plan just in case so that we can still get to the core learning of the lesson.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
I am going to take these numbers and I am going to increase them by doing something healthy. So that you can see what happens when nicotine enters the body, the second it enters the body.

Elizabeth Silva:
And then also using some differential learning techniques, making sure that you have enough visuals, enough auditory stuff, enough kinetic activities, as well as tactile.

Elizabeth Silva teaching a class:
What you are going to do in 30 seconds is you are going to try to simulate the heart by beating for 30 seconds, 66.5. times.

Elizabeth Silva:
The balls that I use actually have little prongs on them so that it stimulates the young person so that they feel like they are manipulating something. And all of that comes into play into how these lessons are then translated by the young person, because there are a lot of different learning styles in that classroom and each learning style, those kids are affected by different risk factors. So I have to reach all of them in many ways to hopefully address the risk factor and help them increase their own protective factors at the same time.

Narrator:
Life Skills education is an approach that has been widely applied and evaluated in over 30 countries throughout the world. But what is the evidence of success at the local school level in the U.S.?

Jan Keefe:
We are seeing through our own assessment that decision-making is changing which is very positive, problem solving is changing which is very positive at the middle school level.

Elizabeth Silva:
One of the things that we are seeing from our Youth Risk Behavior Survey is that the environment that the kids are reporting less risky behaviors in the core areas that we are talking about in the programs, such as substance use and aggressive behavior and bullying and so forth.

Dr. Mark Kerbel:
We already know that the Life Skills program has had a major impact on the behaviors and the attitudes of students in the sixth and seventh grade. Long term effects we have found that it has carried over into kids when they have gone to the high school so we are really excited about those outcomes.

Boy
I think its has helped our awareness about what is out there and how to try to avoid it and try to help yourself.

Boy
I have learned how to stay away from things that I know I shouldn’t be taking or doing and how to deal with difficult situations.

Girl
It teaches you different ways to cope with your anger and anxiety and it helps you realize why you shouldn’t smoke, like there are reasons why it is bad for you.

Boy
It teaches you what to do if you ever get into a situation when you need help getting out of something, like big trouble with a friend or if somebody did something wrong and you don’t know how to tell anybody.

Jan Keefe:
I think when you have respect for yourself, you make good choices. You are in the habit of making good choices. You are in the habit of choosing carefully, who you are going to be with and what you are going to stand for.

Evander French:
This program and others that we have do help kids make good decisions. And if they are making good decisions about tobacco and particularly alcohol and drugs, chances are they are going to be more motivated to do well in school.

Elizabeth Silva:
I want kids to have good quality of life, not just appear successful so I think we need to spend some time here and give it the same importance that we give everything else that happens in an educational setting because this will carry them through, always.

Special thanks to Winchester Public Schools, Winchester, Massachusetts, the Winchester Substance Abuse Coalition, and Life Skills.