As reported by Park Rapids Enterprise…

Park Rapids, MN – Century Middle School has been awarded a $60,000 grant for LifeSkills Training, the Park Rapids School Board learned Monday.

Principal Shawn Andress said the school is one of 40 schools in the state selected to receive the Behavioral Health and Wellness grant from the Department of Human Services, out of 180 schools that applied.

“Grades 6, 7 and 8 will have research-based curriculum and (there will be) training for Mr. Andrew Lachowitzer to receive,” said Andress.

“This four-year grant, then, will allow us to also become part of a study” comparing schools that have implemented the curriculum against schools that have not, she said. “The students will be surveyed, and the families will be surveyed in that study for the (short- and long-term) effects of that curriculum.”

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News from Central, SC as featured in The Newberry Observer

Looking down the hallway outside Westview’s Empowering Families program, you’ll see pictures of dozens of families who have dedicated many hours in a program called Strengthening Families.

More than 200 family members have been a part of Westview’s Strengthening Families, which is actually a nationally and internationally recognized parenting and family-strengthening program. The program is evidence-based and grows family skills to significantly reduce problem behaviors, delinquency, and alcohol and drug abuse in children. The program is also designed to improve social competencies and school performance. Child maltreatment also decreases as parents strengthen bonds with their children and learn more effective parenting skills.

Through a series of family meetings, participants are exposed to science-based parenting skills, children’s life skills, and family life skills training specifically designed for at-risk families. The program is focused on children ages 6-11.

The Strengthening Families Program courses are delivered in 14 sessions (two and a half hours each). Typically, the sessions are preceded by a meal that includes informal family practice time and group leader coaching. Each group may include up to 14 families. During each session, participants gather in three groups: parents, children, and then come together as a family. The sessions will focus on developing positive family strengths, teaching families how to stay resilient, improving parenting skills, decreasing the use of corporal punishment, reducing family conflict and reducing parent drug use. The program will also help children with social skills and relationships.

For this series of meetings, something new is added to the program. It’s a curriculum called Botvin LifeSkills Training. which is an evidence-based substance abuse prevention program designed to reduce the risks of alcohol, tobacco, drug abuse, and violence among young people.

“Through the LifeSkills Training Program, the students have the opportunity to become more successful, more confident, and have a positive outlook on life. The skills taught pertain to the students’ situation. We have a current group of 11-12 graders that are in the Transitions group, meaning they are taught skills to help them become successful as young adults. The young people in this group look forward to the next lesson and talk about it throughout the week,” said Heather Davenport, prevention specialist with Westview and one of the LifeSkills facilitators.

The program uses a broad-brush approach by improving skills in three areas. These skill areas include drug resistance skills, personal self-management skills and general social skills. In the drug resistance component, young people develop their ability to recognize and challenge common misconceptions about tobacco, alcohol and other drug use. Through coaching and practice, they learn information and practical drug resistance skills for dealing with peers and media pressure to engage in alcohol and other drug use.

The personal self-management component teaches students how to examine their self-image and its effects on behavior; set goals and keep track of personal progress; identify everyday decisions and how they may be influenced by others; analyze problem situations, and consider the consequences of each alternative solution before making decisions; reduce stress and anxiety, and look at personal challenges in a positive light.

In the social skills component, students develop the necessary skills to overcome shyness, communicate effectively and avoid misunderstandings, initiate and carry out conversations, handle social requests, utilize both verbal and nonverbal assertiveness skills to make or refuse requests, and recognize that they have choices other than aggression or passivity when faced with tough situations.

For more information about participation in the Strengthening Families Initiative, contact Linda Gault at 803-276-5690. If you would like to discuss the LifeSkills program as a stand-alone service for your youth group or class, contact Heather Davenport at 803-276-5690.

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As featured in Vail Daily

Vail Valley, CO- Thanks to a collaborative grant between Eagle County Schools and Mountain Youth, teachers will be trained in “WhyTry” and “Botvin LifeSkills Training” — part of a comprehensive wellness and prevention plan that ultimately helps young people thrive in school and beyond.

“It’s these partnerships that create a stronger community. Helping youth with coping and resiliency skills from a young age builds strong emotional connections and promotes healthy risk taking,” said Mikayla Curtis, Mountain Youth’s manager of strategic impact, in a news release. “Learning these skills in elementary school will help youth practice and retain them as they develop.”

Eagle County Schools provides students the platform to build skills around social emotional wellness. These efforts have existed for many years, however, and there is a need to have additional evidenced-based or research-based curricula for teachers. For youth, this means teachers have resources they feel they can implement in their classrooms on a daily basis — no special assembly required. These skills will impact the student over their educational career with Eagle County Schools.

“Individual and family skills taught through in-school programs and the Eat Chat Parent series reinforce social emotional development across the community and create a place where youth thrive,” Curtis said.

Most middle and high schools in Eagle County already provide Botvin LifeSkills Training and/or Why Try to their students. Expanding these programs into elementary schools is a natural progression since children who can cope have the tools to overcome internal pressures, peer pressure and life circumstances that may impact their health. Additionally, thanks to this funding, teachers will be able to receive one-on-one coaching and follow-up support from Mountain Youth facilitators.

If you have a child in elementary school, ask them what worries them, then ask them what skills they’ve learned to better cope. Mountain Youth and Eagle County Schools want to keep the learning happening at home, so families can work through challenges youth may face together.

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• As featured in the Indiana Gazette: Michael J. Vuckovich is the superintendent for the Indiana Area School District.

“Recently, I was part of a small group of local leaders who gathered to discuss how we could collectively work together to make Indiana County a stronger, healthier, happier and more productive community through an initiative called “Project Hope.”

This collaborative effort is designed to help in the fight against drugs in our area. While there is a great deal to be completed, I am proud of the work being done in this area as well as the interagency cooperation that is occurring throughout Indiana County.

There are many great things happening in our district through our partnerships with critical friends that play a role in the collective vision for Project Hope. For example, IASD is working with Dr. Mark McGowan and Dr. Tim Runge from Indiana University of Pennsylvania on building a variety of interventions for our students, both academically and behaviorally, that align to our multi-tiered systems of support efforts.

The Open Door drug and alcohol treatment center, IUP and the Armstrong, Clarion and Indiana Drug Coalition are just some of the organizations in attendance at the Project Hope meeting, and it was amazing to hear the incredible tactics and strategies that each organization is utilizing in this battle. There are many other agencies taking part in this effort, including law enforcement, who work every day to make our area a safe place for us to raise our families. It is exciting to consider the endless possibilities this group can achieve through our collaborative efforts.

IASD is doing our part by prioritizing the “whole child” approach to our programming with positive and healthy relationships being at the heart of our vision.

Starting in the 2020-21 school year, IASD will offer a social-emotional curriculum titled Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (P.A.T.H.S.) in grades kindergarten through fifth. Ben Franklin Elementary has been implementing the program this year. The curriculum is a comprehensive program for promoting emotional and social competencies and reducing aggression and behavior problems in elementary school-aged children while simultaneously enhancing the educational process in the classroom.

Furthermore, all of our elementary schools are implementing schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. This is a framework for creating safe and orderly learning environments in schools while improving the social-emotional outcomes for students. It is a proactive approach that relies on research-based practices, including developing clear behavioral expectations, teaching these expectations, acknowledging appropriate behavior, consistently correcting inappropriate behavior and using behavioral data to systematically solve problems. Within the next two or three years, all schools in IASD will be utilizing the PBIS model.

At the junior high school, we have implemented an evidence-based program called Botvin Lifeskills Training in our health and physical education courses. Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) is an evidence-based substance abuse and violence prevention program used in schools and communities throughout the U.S. and in 39 countries around the world. LST has been extensively tested and proven to reduce tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use by as much as 80 percent. The main goals of the LST program are to teach prevention-related information, promote anti-drug norms, teach drug refusal skills and foster the development of personal self-management skills and general social skills.

IASD is an amazing place to be a part of, and I am proud of the work we have accomplished, but there is more to be done in order to sustain the beauty our area has to offer our families, friends and neighbors. During this meeting, I was overwhelmed with the level of care that exists in all of the organizations in attendance, and want to thank Mike Donnelly, president of Indiana Printing and Publishing, which owns The Indiana Gazette, for his work in bringing the agencies together.

I am confident that this collective group can help in the battle against drugs by focusing on the implementation of evidence-based strategies, strategic alliances and interagency cooperation focused on getting “all ships” sailing in the same direction. I am confident that our work will have a positive impact on our community, and I am proud to have a small part in this initiative.”

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“A representative from Van Buren County headed to the Washington, D.C., area to join more than 3,000 substance misuse prevention specialists and advocates from throughout the country for CADCA’s (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America’s) 30th Annual National Leadership Forum.
“I was so excited to be able to spend several days with other similar organizations from across the country, learning and honing my prevention skills so my community can be a better place, one that doesn’t suffer from the harms of substance misuse,” said Kris Rankin SAFE Coalition & IPFS Coordinator. “I came back re-energized with new strategies under my belt to tackle substance use in Van Buren County.”

CADCA’s Forum covered a wide range of topics – everything from how to prevent prescription misuse to addressing electronic cigarettes use, trending marijuana issues and how to develop policies to reduce underage drinking.

Our coalition has recently impacted the community by working to address underage drinking and underage binge drinking by working with local privately owned facilities that host community events and city councils to develop best practices alcohol restrictions for their facilities and public places.  The coalition also worked with the Van Buren County Community School District to implement the Botvin LifeSkills Training Curriculum with the 7^th & 8^th grade students during their Explore Rotation.  The coalition has also continued to work with the 7-12^th grade students at the Van Buren County Junior/Senior High School through the Youth Leadership Council.  The Youth Leadership Council learns about substance misuse and then does activities for their peers to promote a substance abuse free lifestyle. 

Our coalition representative heard from several leaders including Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).  The SAFE Coalition also met with U.S. Representatives and Senators at the Forum’s Capitol Hill Day event on Wednesday, Feb. 5. During those meetings, they shared local data with each of them to show what has been happening around substance misuse in Van Buren County. 

CADCA’s National Leadership Forum, the nation’s largest training event for community prevention leaders, treatment professionals and researchers took place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center Feb. 3-6, 2020. Visit the CADCA Forum website for details about training sessions, speakers and special events.

The Van Buren County SAFE Coalition seeks to stimulate community involvement to promote responsible behaviors, among youth and adults leading to SAFE (Substance Abuse Free Environments) and healthy communities.  For information about the coalition please contact the SAFE Coalition by phone at 319-293-3334 ext. 1017 or by email at safe.coalition@van-burencsd.org.

About CADCA The mission of CADCA (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America) is to strengthen the capacity of community coalitions to create and maintain safe, healthy and drug-free communities globally. This is accomplished by providing technical assistance and training, public policy advocacy, media strategies and marketing programs, training and special events.

Read full article: http://vbsafecoalition.blogspot.com/2020/02/van-buren-county-safe-coalition.html

The Lehigh County Communities That Care, a joint effort of the Whitehall-Coplay and Catasauqua CTC groups, held its annual meeting Jan. 23 in the Zentz Community Center at Fellowship Community, Whitehall.

The theme for the event was “Prevention Coalitions + Prevention Science = Good Economic Sense.”

There were approximately 50 people in attendance at the meeting. Attendees included Whitehall-Coplay School District personnel; representatives from Lehigh County Drug and Alcohol, Center for Humanistic Change, Lehigh Valley Suicide Prevention Coalition and Lehigh County Probation; Lehigh County Commissioner Bob Elbich; Ellen Kern, as a representative of state Sen. Pat Browne, R-16th; Steve Strella, as a representative of state Rep. Zach Mako, R-183rd; and more.

The Catasauqua Area School District was represented by Amy Dymond-Jones, middle school guidance counselor, and Shelley Keffer, coordinator of student services.

Denise Continenza, CTC coordinator, discussed many of the highlights and advances the CTC and the WCSD have made, including the creation of several short videos aimed at students and parents on the dangers of underage drinking and social hosting, the continuation of the Botvin Life Skills Training in the schools and the addition of the program at the high school level and the formation of mental health partnerships to assist the students.

The CASD has a group called the Catasauqua Community Cares Program, which addresses food insecurity and more among the students. The district is also on its second year of working with Salisbury Behavioral Health to provide mental health support for students. CASD has two school resource officers and is also implementing the Botvin LifeSkills Training program.

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WESTFIELD, MA – A workshop on Family Communication, part of the planned series  Keeping Our Kids Connected, will take place  Jan. 29 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the cafeteria of the Westfield Intermediate School, 350 Southampton Road.

The workshop is open to all parents and guardians of children in grades K to 12. Childcare will be provided.

Presenters are Westfield Public Schools Physical Education teachers Karen Gomez from Westfield Technical Academy, Liz Bolivar from Highland and Paper Mill Elementary schools and Michele Tarbox from WIS.

The workshop will cover how misunderstandings happen; what communication skills can prevent misunderstandings; how to set goals for improving family communication, and how healthy family skills can help make family members comfortable talking to one another about difficult topics.

Tarbox said the workshops are part of the Botvin LifeSkills Training curriculum they have been using in their health classes, and also grew out of a November workshop on communication by a speaker from the Coalition on Recovery and Education (CORE).

“In our world, so many things take away from communicating face to face with each other,” Tarbox said. She said on Wednesday they will talk about taking time for the family, to strengthen family relationships and help parents to help their children make the right choices in their lives.

Families who attend will also be asked what topics they would like to cover in upcoming workshops. Tarbox said they plan to hold two more workshops this school year, one in March and one in April or May, depending on the interest and the need.

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As featured in Education Week’s blog…

Every time there’s a shooting in a school, many principals and district leaders feel the responsibility—and pressure—to take action to ensure that gun violence doesn’t happen in their schools. 

But it’s not always easy to find proven, research-based safety practices that work. It can be difficult to tap into experts who can help them make sense of state mandates and make good decisions about purchasing products that claim to keep schools safe. And it’s not a given that they can connect with principals and district leaders who have developed successful local practices. 

It’s not there isn’t research-backed and tested practices that are known to prevent and reduce violence. Too often, though, they are often inaccessible to principals—not in one place and in multi-page documents that busy school and district leaders don’t have time to read and absorb, much less take the steps to put the proven strategies into place. And many of those strategies don’t take into account the resources—in money and staff—to make those things work.

“The issue that we face is not necessarily a shortage of answers or ideas, it’s the lack of dissemination of evidence-based practices,” said Danny Carlson, the director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals.  “There is work to be done to ensure that district leaders and folks on the ground are making decisions about these programs that are actually evidence based.”  

Frustrated by that gap, the National Association of School Resource Officers is leading a new effort to create the first-ever national set of best practices for preventing school violence. The goal is to create an accessible and easy-to-use guide and curriculum for districts, and training for district and school leaders to put those practices into place locally. The organization recently got a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department to develop the violence-prevention protocol for K-12 schools.

The Alabama-based NASRO is partnering with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, Boulder; the National Police Foundation; Safe and Sound Schools; and the “I Love U Guys” Foundation. It is forming an advisory group that will include teachers, principals, and school mental health professionals.

“If we can create more consistency in how schools and districts prepare for and try to prevent violence from occurring, I think that’s a pretty big accomplishment,” said Mo Canady, NASRO’s executive director.

Looking Beyond Building Security

It’s early in the process of what’s likely to be a two-year project, but Canady said the core group will take a comprehensive approach to school safety—beyond hardening buildings. It will include creating positive school climate, bystander response and threat reporting, information sharing, and threat assessments. It will provide best-practices for conducting lockdown drills in ways that do not traumatize students and adults, Canady said.

There will also be training for teams of educators and law enforcement representatives from local districts on how to implement these strategies in ways that make sense for their communities, said Beverly Kingston, the director and senior research associate at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. In larger districts, the district safety teams that will receive the training will include other key people, like the school psychologist, she said. 

A Focus on Preventing Violence  

A myriad of reasons—from 50 different states with their own laws and policies, to local control that gives districts, and in some cases, principals, autonomy to pick and choose what they’ll implement, to a lack of resources—help explain why there hasn’t been a one-stop shop of best practices for districts and why there isn’t a national standardized protocol on school violence prevention, Kingston said.

“From our center’s perspective in studying this for so many years, we really do know what it takes to prevent violence, and our goals are to prevent the violence from occurring in the first place,” Kingston said. “So, preventing someone from having the motivation to want to carry out a violent act, really addressing it much more upstream.”

The core group will comb through research for effective strategies. They’ll be looking at state, local, and districts policies as well as scientifically-backed approaches. The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, for example, has a list of programs with evidence behind them, including Botvin LifeSkills Training program, a violence and substance abuse prevention program aimed at middle school students. Colorado’s Safe2Tell program, a tip line which grew out of recommendations from the Columbine High School shooting, allows students and others to anonymously report concerns about safety is a prevention program that works, she said.  

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Webinar: This webinar is designed to look at the Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) program (Elementary and Middle school levels) and the outcomes related to CASEL’s five core competencies of social and emotional learning (SEL). 

Under the federal education law, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), schools can expand their SEL programs that teach children self-control, to resolve conflicts, and to make responsible decisions and avoid risky behaviors.  Research shows that these “soft skills” benefit children for their entire lives and can have a positive impact on schools. 

Join us to learn how LST not only supports SEL competencies but also promotes healthy alternatives to risky behavior through activities designed to teach students the necessary skills to resist social (peer) pressures.  LST helps students develop greater self-esteem and self-confidence, enables students to effectively cope with anxiety, and enhances their decision-making and problem-solving skills. 

Duration:  60 minutes

About the presenter: A graduate of Penn State University, Kim Williams is committed to enhancing the lives of youth with her extensive background in evidence-based prevention program implementation. A dynamic professional who has worked in schools, non-profits, and university statewide support organizations, Kim currently trains future implementers of the LifeSkills Training program as part of the National Health Promotion Associates national training cadre.  Kim has focused on social and emotional learning through her work with the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS®) program as a national and international trainer.  Her focus concentrates on translating evidence-based program research practices into best practices in community and school setting program implementation. 

Space is limited. Three dates to choose from:

• Friday, February 7^th at 11am ET
• Tuesday, February 11^th at 3pm ET
• Wednesday, February 12^th at 1pm ET
• Friday, February 14th at 3pm ET (new date added!)

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.