Herod students graduate from DARE program

Fifty-nine fifth graders from Herod Elementary graduated on Thursday, April 24, 2008 from the DARE program. For the past twelve weeks these students have met weekly with DARE Instructor Officer Julie Gaspard to discuss the effects of drugs and alcohol on individuals and society. Games, videos, role playing, and booklet assignments were all part of the program.

Prizes were donated by McDonald’s Meaux’s Grocery, Frank’s Drive Inn and the Abbeville Police Association and were awarded to the boy and gorl who placed first through third in the essay contest.

“All of the students did an excellent job and are to be congratulated for the work and sills that they learned,” said Officer Gaspard.

D.A.R.E. was founded in 1983 in Los Angeles and has proven so successful that it is now being implemented in 75 percent of our nation’s school districts and in more than 43 countries around the world. D.A.R.E. is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teaches children from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives. Since 1997 there have been 18 studies conducted on D.A.R.E. showing very positive results.

The D.A.R.E. curriculum is designed to be taught by police officers whose training and experience gave them the background needed to answer the sophisticated questions often posed by young students about drugs and crime. Prior to entering the D.A.R.E. program, officers undergo 80 hours of special training in areas such as child development, classroom management, teaching techniques, and communication skills.

D.A.R.E. is universally viewed as an internationally recognized model of community policing. The United States Department of Justice has identified how D.A.R.E. benefits local communities:

•D.A.R.E. “humanizes” the police: that is, young people can begin to relate to officers as people

•D.A.R.E. permits students to see officers in a helping role, not just an enforcement role

•D.A.R.E. opens lines of communication between law enforcement and youth

•D.A.R.E. Officers can serve as conduits to provide information beyond drug-related topics

•D.A.R.E. opens dialogue between the school, police, and parents to deal with other issues