About your Kids: Children have choices

She walked into the classroom quiet and cheerless - no bright “Good morning, Mrs. Spencer.” With cloudy eyes she came close and told me her cousin took his own life over the weekend.

“It was drugs,” she said softly. “My dad told me if anyone ever offered me drugs, that I was to say no real fast.”

I believe she will. She has seen too personally how life can be lost to a bad decision.

A wise man once said every choice we make leads to a positive result or a negative consequence. It's not a new concept - the law of cause and effect is as old as gravity, and school is a good place to learn it.

Students who chew gum in class and shoot paperclips into ceiling tiles get to spend time there after the last bell. If they fail to turn in assignments, they land on academic probation. But when they work hard and act responsibly, they earn movie nights, pizza parties and maybe an extra treat or two from mom and dad.

That's why drug and gang prevention programs target school-age children; they try to help kids see what's stuck on the end of the forks in the road. However, in spite of these and other efforts, the district attorney's Web site describes Tulare County as “fertile ground for a growing gang population.”

Unfortunately, we are not alone.

The same thing happened up north in San Mateo County, but three police departments there joined forces and decided their youth problems needed an unorthodox approach. The departments teamed up with area churches and local businesses to offer teens vocational training opportunities that steered them away from culture-corrupting gangs.

Their internship program last summer was so successful that officials created a vocational resource guide for high school students seeking careers that may not include college. The program also included ride-alongs with police officers and parenting classes on how to keep kids off drugs and away from gangs. It was a community effort, and in the long run, the community will benefit.

As our cities and school districts pour hard-earned money into anti-gang efforts, certain segments of the movie and music industries will continue to pour even more into slick paper ads and online teasers that glorify gang affiliation. Many major retail stores have no problem making the necessary clothing styles available, and some of our own citizens profit financially through illegal drug trafficking.

But it's a fight we can't stop fighting.

Our kids hear of tragic overdoses and ruined lives, but many still think it is “cool” to walk, talk, dress and act like gangsters whose futures so often end in a back alley pool of blood or a prison cell.

If we can just convince our children of how quickly their youth can be destroyed, maybe they will choose life over death.

Maybe then I will see fewer little boys swaggering across the playground with an in-your-face attitude. And fewer little girls strutting their stuff.

Maybe childhood would last a little longer.

Davalynn Spencer is a Tulare County public school teacher. Contact her at aboutyourkids@Hotmail.com

This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on December 13, 2005