DARE program offers guidance

By KENNY KEANE, Globe staff reporter
Posted April 3, 2003

Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. for short, is a program used by several schools in the Sioux City Diocese to help children resist drugs and violence.

For those schools within the diocese that participate in the program, the main groups of students targeted are those in fifth grade. The program typically runs for 16 weeks, and a graduation is then held the week after the course is complete.

Most schools will hold their graduations later this spring as they have yet to complete the course, but one school in particular, Holy Family in Sioux City, completed the program with a graduation ceremony on March 27 at the school's St. Joseph Center.

Ron Demers, a Briar Cliff graduate and meteorologist for KTIV-TV in Sioux City, was the guest speaker for the graduation.

Demers told the students that although D.A.R.E. was not available when he was their age, he had "mom," who asked him to write down that he would never smoke or do drugs.

"The parents should still be at home doing that same thing," Demers said, "but this is just a great reinforcement coming from the police. So I think that's kind of what the D.A.R.E. program provides."

Even Bishop Daniel N. DiNardo found time after the ceremony to pay the students a visit, according to Beth Calhoun, Holy Family principal.

"It was cool when he came in at the very end, and the kids just swamped him," Calhoun said. "It was almost like Jesus standing among the children.

"He talked about different things. He knew the curriculum and what they had studied. So he just kind of went through it all."

Some of the other diocesan schools that participate in D.A.R.E. include: Seton Grade School in Algona, Danbury Catholic, St. Rose of Lima in Denison, Gehlen Catholic Grade School in Le Mars and St. Mary Grade School in Remsen.

One of the components of the program, which is actually a requirement for graduation, is for the students to write an essay on what they learned. Usually one or two essay winners are chosen, and those students will then read their essays during the graduation ceremony.

Other elements of the program may include having high school role models talk to the fifth-graders, participating in dances or lock-ins or going on field trips.

Liz Hilker, fifth-grade teacher at St. Rose of Lima, said the officer who teaches their program took the students to Omaha for a field trip to watch the Omaha Beef, a National Indoor Football League team. Since the trip took place on a Friday during Lent, the officer also had the McDonald's in Denison donate fish filet sandwiches and fries for the students to eat before they left.

Developing good relationships between the police instructors and the students is another important aspect of the D.A.R.E. program, according to Gehlen principal Lorie Nussbaum.

"I think that roles over into their relationship to other police officers and the whole positive attitude that they're here to support us, help us and keep us safe," she said. "I think that has been one of the best things, and it makes the program that much more successful."

Holy Family's instructor, Officer Rex Mueller of the Sioux City Police Department, said it's especially important to reach out to the young children who are at an impressionable age.

"The opportunities for young kids are coming younger and younger as far as drug use goes," he said. "I think if you do a good enough job teaching, role modeling for them and showing them all the reasons that they should stay drug free and violence free then that's something that hopefully will carry through during their teenage years and their whole life."