School district promotes drug-free way of life for Red Ribbon Week

Living drug-free was the theme of the week for California college students.

California faculties acknowledged Red Ribbon Week weekdays final week, and academics and school hosted quite a lot of occasions and actions to coincide with this yr’s theme: “Life Is A Puzzle, Solve It Drug Free.”

California High School Principal Jeffrey West mentioned with all the challenges highschool college students face frequently, selling a constructive and wholesome way of life is one thing the faculties prioritize yr spherical.

“We focus a lot, all the time, on good decision-making and wellness,” he mentioned. “It’s not about the five days, it’s a consistent partnership with our families and our kids about making good choices.”

Red Ribbon Week is a nationwide drug-use prevention marketing campaign created within the ’80s by the National Family Partnership. The partnership’s mission states its aim is “to lead and support our nation’s families and communities in nurturing the full potential of healthy, drug-free youth” by way of consciousness, advocacy and sources.

California faculties adjusted their programming to suit totally different age teams. Elementary college students participated in a poster-drawing competitors as an instance artistic methods to make constructive, wholesome selections. Moniteau County faculty useful resource officers selected a winner from every class and an general school-wide winner.

Kindergarten: Jordyn Wickham

First Grade: Argo Stauffer

Second Grade: Kamryn Gieck

Third Grade: Eleanor Anderson

Fourth Grade: Elijah Castro

Overall: Daphney Floyd

California Middle School college students participated in instructional actions that demonstrated the damaging results of drug impairment. Students placed on blood-alcohol-content goggles and tried to finish duties with their imaginative and prescient and senses impaired.

Another occasion the center faculty held in the course of the week was “I Can, You Can, We Can: Being Drug Free Comes in Cans” meals drive. All three faculties enlisted the assistance of their households to assemble canned objects for the Giving Tree, meals pantry and meals field program. California Middle School college students gathered round 110 canned objects.

Health instructor Ashley Anderson at California High School centered her classes throughout Red Ribbon Week on the consequences of particular sorts of medication and the damaging penalties that come up from them. Students broke into pairs and taught their classmates concerning the drug they had been assigned.

“Our whole class revolves around decision-making,” Anderson mentioned. “I think as things come into our society, we have to talk about it and teach about it.”

Alongside drug-use prevention, Anderson’s class advocates for wholesome residing in different areas of life as properly. Her college students coordinated with the coed council and faculty counselors to create indicators across the faculty with constructive messages and phrases of encouragement.

“We talk about dimensions of wellness, and then we talk about mental health disorders and suicide prevention,” Anderson mentioned. “If you see these warning signs, go up and have a conversation with them. So hopefully they’re more open about it.”

California High School counselors Heather Martin and Diana Norris really feel {that a} higher societal emphasis has been positioned on youth psychological well being within the years for the reason that Covid-19 pandemic. The social isolation posed a troublesome problem for still-developing younger college students.

“Whether you knew it or not, there was some sort of mental, emotional or physical … after effect or current effects (for everybody),” Martin mentioned.

The two of them reiterated West’s assertion that college students’ well being and well-being doesn’t cease and begin with Red Ribbon Week every year. Helping college students overcome challenges they could be going through outdoors the classroom is some extent of emphasis for the college always. Teachers and school look to kind a private reference to college students to earn their belief and make them really feel comfy opening as much as them.

“We try to be visible. We’re always kind of out and about. Our doors are always open,” mentioned Norris.

“We did a thing, I think it was last year, where I had our staff put a check mark by every kid they knew. Because the goal is to find out who do we not know,” mentioned West.