Alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use awareness and prevention
As young adolescents enter the teen years, many of them encounter peer pressure to try harmful and illegal substances. This exposure comes at a time when they are eager to identify with peers and distance themselves from adults. However, a strong resilience and health focus at the middle grades level can help students make healthy choices even when peer pressure makes unsafe choices appear more attractive.
According to
Getting Results: Part I, California Action Guide to Creating Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities,(PDF; 2 MB; 192 pp.), schools have a responsibility to provide safe, disciplined, and drug-free environments that enable students to focus on the academic and social tasks designed to foster their development into healthy, productive adults. Getting Results was developed to help simplify the task of educators in determining which programs to use by linking legislative requirements to what research and evaluation say about exemplary and promising strategies for preventing the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs among young people.
Drug abuse prevention is an important part of a comprehensive approach to developing adolescent resilience and health. A growing body of research indicates that students who feel confident and have strong goals for the future are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors. For example, Ensuring That No Child is Left Behind: How Are Student Health Risks and Resilience Related to the Academic Progress of Schools? (Outside Source) uses data from the California Healthy Kids Survey (Outside Source) to underscore the importance of risk and youth development factors to academic achievement. According to the report, policies and practices that focus exclusively on raising test scores while ignoring the comprehensive health needs of students are likely to leave many children behind.
The Health Framework for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve (PDF; 2MB; 264pp.) provides guidelines for developing a prevention program for illegal substances (pages 59 and 60).
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