SCHOOL BASED SERVICES
UNITAS implements three Evidence Based Programs in the schools in which we work in, Botvin’s Life Skills, The Mendez Foundation’s Too Good for Drugs and Violence, and Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RiPP).
Life Skills
The Botvin Life Skills Training (LST) High School program is a highly interactive, skills-based program designed to promote positive health and personal development for youth in grades 9 or 10. A study in the World Journal of Preventative Medicine found that this program cuts drug abuse in half by helping adolescents navigate the challenges of their high school years and preparing them for the independence and responsibilities that they will encounter as young adults. The LST High School program uses developmentally appropriate, collaborative learning strategies to help students achieve competency in the skills that have been shown to prevent substance use, violence, and other health risk behaviors. The Life Skills Training High School program is an integrated approach that helps to develop personal, interpersonal, and drug resistance skills. The curriculum is designed to strengthen student abilities in the following areas:
1. Personal Self-Management Skills Students develop strategies for making healthy decisions, reducing stress, and managing anger.
2. General Social Skills Students strengthen their communication skills and learn how to build healthy relationships.
3. Drug Resistance Skills Students understand the consequences of substance use, risk-taking, and the influences of the media.
Too Good for Drugs and Violence
The Mendez Foundation Too Good for Drugs Program empowers teens to meet the challenges of school life fostering confidence and building resistance to substance abuse. When implemented students are encouraged to set and reach more complex goals and, in the process, develop and practice stronger decision-making skills and effective-communication skills.
Students also learn to identify and manage their emotions and the emotions of others so they can better relate to others and seek to associate with positive peer groups. Too Good for Drugs addresses environmental and developmental risk factors related to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs through the
development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes teens need to make healthy decisions consistent with
their healthy goals.
Utilizing the tools that come with the Too Good curriculum includes coordinated interactive activities
and games that create a learning environment in which students can learn and then apply the skills
learned. Additionally, Too Good for Drugs helps develop skills to build on core social skills sets which
are used to broaden the student’s sense of self efficacy and confidence and are tailored to the student’s
intellectual, cognitive, and social development.
Responding in Peaceful and Positive ways (RiPP)
The RiPP curriculum consists of 16 45-minute lessons per year in grades 6-8. The curriculum is taught by the Prevention Counselor or the Site Coordinator.
Students are directed to operate from a social-cognitive problem-solving model, SCIDDLE (Stop, Calm down, Identify the problem and your feelings about it, Decide among your options, Do it, Look back, and Evaluate), as well as specific skills for violence prevention (e.g., talk things through, avoid potentially violent situations, ignore teasing, and diffuse the situation). Through repeated use of this problem-solving model, increased awareness of the non-violent options, opportunities for reflection and practice, students learn how to choose the strategy most likely to provide the desired short- and long-term outcomes in any given situation.
The lessons in the RiPP program introduce the problem-solving model in a cumulative fashion, with each lesson building upon the previous ones, and subsequent years building on the previous years. A combination of four basic strategies are used: behavioral management, mental rehearsal of the social-cognitive problem-solving model, small group activities and experiential learning techniques. Small group activities provide opportunities to experiment with the problem-solving model and non-violent options and allow students to use the skills during group tasks with peers and in role-plays.
