Educationally Speaking:Emotional Awareness and Drug Prevention

Most school curriculum deals with intellectual instruction, but often times what interferes most with teaching is some form of emotional duress. Although understanding your feelings and knowing how to cope with them is hard for many, few schools have cohesive programs for delivering curriculum intended to help students mature emotionally. Probably the closest we come is teaching students life skills about making good choices in our drug prevention programs.

One of the oldest and largest drug prevention campaigns is Red Ribbon Week which will be celebrated October 17-25, 2009. This week is intended to help communities deliver a message of their collective opposition to drugs and to support children in making a commitment to live drug free lives.

Teachers can use this week to do more than share drug information. They can address some of the emotional needs of their students in the form of life skills education. Students yearn to be accepted and feel connected. Many attention getting devices are employed so that they might be noticed. All children need love and understanding, yet some seek inappropriate ways of getting this attention.

When students feel alone, like they don’t belong and no one understands them, they act out. Some lack confidence in their ability to perform their job, while others struggle with self-discipline. They experience a sense of lack as though they themselves are not enough - not smart enough, good enough, worthy enough, pretty enough, athletic enough, fast enough and the list goes on.

Classroom interruptions result and detention is assigned, notes go home and referrals are made to the office. Those who deviate regularly from the norm visit the vice principal who works to prescribe the most appropriate intervention strategies. If the negative behaviors aren’t successfully altered by these methods, a school counselor may be called in to help address a deeper rooted problem.

School counselors’ time is stretched thin just meeting the needs of their current case load, not counting the new referrals from teachers. As a school community, we worry because these students who continually seek attention may be at a higher risk for resorting to drugs and alcohol as a way to self-medicate their emotional pain.

Emotional immaturity is not limited to children. We seem to lack a cultural process for growing up our emotions. When stressed, adults often revert to childish behaviors and make inappropriate decisions based on unidentified emotions. Recovering addicts may tell you that they self-medicated their feelings by having a drink to numb feelings which began a bad coping habit.

It is easier to prevent unhealthy behaviors than to try to change them once they have been established. Forming social/emotional skills is a vital aspect of a child’s development which is helpful to successful classroom management. Making good decisions when feeling pressured and stressed is an important life skill taught in drug prevention programs.

Upper elementary students are beginning to become aware of the power of their peers to influence their choices. The students most at risk for using tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are those who do not realize they have choices. When faced with peer pressure to experiment with these substances, many fear losing their friendships if they refuse. This can lead to an impulsive decision to try smoking, drinking, snorting or shooting up so they’re not different than their peer.

Knowing when to ask for help is another skill that has been identified by recovery programs as important to practice early on. When the stress and frustration of homework assignments is too much, perhaps phoning a classmate for a clue would help them feel successful. Learning how to mitigate this sense of overwhelm is a positive step toward emotional stability and ultimately drug prevention.

The Red Ribbon Campaign began as a way to honor a drug enforcement agent, DEA, “Kiki” Camarena who was killed by drug traffickers while fighting illegal drugs in Mexico. You can help keep alive his dream that our country and children be safe from drugs by wearing a red ribbon the last week in October. The hope is that we’ll reduce the demand for drugs through prevention and education programs.

If you’re not comfortable talking about the various kinds of drugs and their affects, try addressing the life skills that kids need in order to avoid choosing drugs and alcohol as their coping mechanism for happiness.