Spring Grove Police
Department's D.A.R.E. Program
D.A.R.E
Provides Life-Skills
D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Officers of
the Police Department have received special training for
working with children and young adults in order to
establish self-esteem, as well as remaining drug and
alcohol free.
The Spring Grove Police Department
teaches a Drug Abuse and Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)
program keeping it real.
D.A.R.E. is a drug abuse prevention program designed to
equip elementary school children with basic life skills
for resisting peer pressure to experiment with tobacco,
drugs and alcohol. The core curriculum focuses on
5th grade students who are visited once a week for 10
weeks. Each lesson is 45 to 60 minutes and
involves the students in a variety of exercises.
D.A.R.E. gives children the skills
to recognize and resist the pressures that cause them to
experiment with drugs and alcohol, as well as learning
to "say no" to the different types of peer pressure.
D.A.R.E. helps build a child’s self-esteem. They learn
that there are alternatives to taking drugs.
Furthermore, students are taught methods for handling
stress, value judgments and risks, as well as respect
for the law, personal safety, and how to recognize the
glamorization of drugs and alcohol in the media. The
program concludes with graduation ceremonies honoring
those students for their successful completion of the
D.A.R.E. program.
D.A.R.E. lessons focus on
four major areas:
- Providing accurate
information about drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
- Teaching students good
decision-making skills.
- Showing students how to
recognize and resist peer pressure.
- Giving students ideas for
positive alternatives to drug use.
D.A.R.E
officers work with children to raise their self-esteem,
teach them how to make decisions on their own, and help
them identify positive
alternatives to drugs. Through role-playing, the D.A.R.E.
curriculum emphasizes the negative consequences of drug
use, and reinforces the skills to resist peer pressure
and intimidation.
