Marijuana Policy Project

Fifth-grader Corshay Battle received a valuable life lesson Wednesday— one the Moore Street Elementary student was none too hesitant about sharing.

"We learned that we should not take drugs and to just say no," said the 11-year-old.

Battle was among the first Dublin students to take part in the local D.A.R.E. program this year following its one-year hiatus from the school system.

Now, local law enforcement officials are hoping Battle's newfound perspective is one she and her classmates don't mind sharing for a long time.

Dublin Police Chief Wayne Cain said last year the program was not up and running in the school system because there was no trained officer on staff to teach it since the former D.A.R.E. officer left the police force. However, prior to that the program had been successfully running in Dublin since 1990.

Cain was one of the local officers trained in Georgia's first D.A.R.E. class, and worked as a D.A.R.E. officers for six years.

"Dublin was one of the first cities in Georgia to have a D.A.R.E. program," he said.

In fact, local law enforcement officers from both Dublin Police and the Laurens County Sheriff's Department were among the first in the state to complete the mandated D.A.R.E. training 14 years ago.

Dublin Police Officer Walter Johnson is the new D.A.R.E officer for Dublin City Schools. He was on hand at Moore Street Wednesday, where he gave a program introduction to system fifth-graders. The program is usually introduced to students in fifth or sixth grade according to the official national D.A.R.E. Web site. However, Cain said there is a shorter version of the curriculum that can be used for elementary-aged students as well as versions for both middle and high schools.

He said he hopes to have another officer trained soon as well.

"We do oftentimes do visits to the lower grades," he said.

Four Moore Street classes will take part in the program this semester, and four others will participate in the spring.

Developed by a team of educators and trained officers, Drug Abuse Resistance Education or D.A.R.E. focuses on teaching children about personal responsibility and peer pressure in hopes of curbing drug abuse among the nation's youth. Nationwide, over 26 million school-aged children will take part in the program this year alone, according to the Web site.

The 10-week national D.A.R.E. curriculum is taught by a local trained officer and covers topics such as smoking and tobacco use, peer pressure and alcohol abuse.

Johnson completed a two-week training course at Fort Stewart to become a D.A.R.E. officer, along with other officers from across the state and even some from other states. There, he learned classroom management skills and the proper methods for relaying the D.A.R.E. message to students. In order to retain his certification, he must attend the national D.A.R.E. conference each year. According to the D.A.R.E. Web site, there are over 50,000 trained program officers across the country.

Each week for the course of the program, Johnson will meet with the students to go over a particular area designated by the curriculum. At the start of each week's discussion, he will also pull questions from the D.A.R.E. box set up in each of the classrooms. The boxes are provided to give students a chance to write down any questions they may have or issues they would like to discuss.

Johnson said while it may take the students a while to warm up to the program, he hopes they become comfortable enough to talk to him or another adult if they have issues they need to discuss.

"I'm working on getting to know them," he said following Wednesday's introduction.

Throughout the course of the program, the students also learn how to deal with personal pressures at home and how to talk to their parents or another adult if they have a problem. Johnson said while the old curriculum was more lecture-based, the new curriculum focuses on discussion and how kids can deal with drug-related issues. The new curriculum also addresses advertising and how young adults may become a target for television and radio. Johnson said it also addresses misconceptions advertising presents about youth and drug use and how to work through those types of images.

"Kids are not using as many drugs and alcohol as people think they are," he said, which goes against some of the images young adults may see presented on television. "It teaches them to make the right decisions."

The program aims to teach youth how to recognize and resist influences that may steer them toward drug abuse. In 2001, there were 468 reported drug-related juvenile arrests in Georgia, ages 10 to 17, according to statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. However, the agency's Web site also indicates those figures have declined in recent years.

Cain said although some of the lessons learned through the program may fade as the students get older, much of the impact remains if the message is reinforced. He said he often has former students he taught in the program who still come up to him today to relay what type of impact it has had on their lives. While an officer, he said he taught every student in the Dublin system from fifth-grade to high school.

"I knew every student in the school system," he said.

More than anything, Cain said the program works to build a relationship between students and officers as well as other adults, which is most important of all.

"It builds a bond and trust with the police," he said."As with any program, if you don't reinforce it, the lessons fade over time. Anytime you can communicate with our youth and make a the class interesting, they learn."