March 2010 Calendar Resources
- Spring Break Campaign
- Middle School Month
- Ghost Out
- Suicide Awareness Month
- National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week (March 16-23)
- National Youth Violence Week (March 24-28)
- Kick Butts Day (March 24)
Spring Break Campaign
You should have already received your Spring Break Campaign from the FLORIDA SADD office in Tallahassee. Enjoy the materials and have a safe spring break!
Middle School Month
Middle school students face many of the same issues as do high school students. It is so important for SADD chapters to reach out to their middle school counterparts and help them in facing dangerous decisions that could have long-term consequences. Research has found messages taught by peer-led programs are significantly more successful than the same messages taught by the classroom teacher. What better way to get the attention and commitment of middle school students than to have high school SADD members speaking and working with them! Helping them to start a SADD chapter or working with an established chapter would be the ideal situation.
As mentors for middle school students, SADD members can provide information, skills, encouragement and support to help these younger students say no to tobacco, alcohol and other drugs and follow good safety practices.
The following are activities that your SADD chapter can do during middle school month.
- Rather than just speaking to students, consider mixing your presentation with a play, skit, role-play or rap to get your traffic safety and drug awareness message across. Whenever possible, make your presentation interactive, including middle school students in the action. Provide a copy of the material for students to keep as a reminder.
- Getting young people to buckle up whenever they are in a car is a high priority. For fun with a message, hold a Quick Click Buckle Challenge to teach the ease and necessity of buckling up for safety. Invite Vince and Larry, the crash dummies, to assist. To host a Quick Click Buckle Challenge, you will need a stopwatch and a four-door sedan with seat belts. A bullhorn and whistle are also helpful. Teams of four students race against time as they jump into a parked car, put on their seat belts, raise their hands in the air, then change seats and repeat the procedure until students are back in their starting positions. The object is to have the shortest time. Winning schools have been known to put on and take off four sets of seat belts in 25 seconds. Beat that.
- While talking about safety belts, don’t forget to discuss the issue of air bags and where younger brothers and sisters should sit in a car.
- Tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are now prevalent in the lives of many middle school youngsters. SADD members can do much to assist these young students in learning how to say no, why it is important to say no, and how to save face with their peers while saying no. Role-playing is a great way to get the message across.
- To encourage students to really take a look at the downside of drug use, conduct a door contest. Choose categories for awards and give prizes to the best in each category. Leave the doors decorated for a week so students will see the message daily as they pass the doors.
- Bicycles, skateboards, in-line skating and scooters are the major means of travel and fun for middle school students. These activities, when not done safely, can be major causes of injuries and even death. SADD members can be very effective in making sure that younger students know how to participate in these activities safely. Plan a Bicycle and In-line Skating Rodeo, including a test of skills and safety checks for both bikes and skates. Ask a local bicycle club, bicycle shop and a knowledgeable police officer to assist in this project. Your local civic organization may also be willing to help by providing snacks and drinks.
- Because the issues that previously only affected high school age youth are now working down to the middle school, many activities conducted at the high school can be duplicated at the middle school. Middle school students like to do the Chain of Life, Red Ribbon Campaign, and the Tree of Life.
- Don’t forget to have them sign the SADD Contract for Life. Even though they are not old enough to drive, they could still find themselves in a dangerous situation and needing to call home. Getting in a car with someone who has been drinking is one of those instances.
Although March is commonly Middle School Month, activities at your middle school and even your elementary school can be done throughout the year. Also due to FCAT this year we are promoting a Middle School Campaign during the month of April.
Ghost Out
This program illustrates in a dramatic way the devastation that drinking and driving can cause. The goal of this program is to impact students to make the decision to never drink and drive and to never get into a vehicle with an impaired driver.
How Ghost-Out works:
- Establish a Ghost-Out committee made up of SADD club members, parents, school administrators, the school counselor, community members, faculty, and the School Resource Officer. Be sure to also include your Safe and Drug Free Schools Coordinator as many of them have funds for this event.
- Select a date for your Ghost-Out (often it is the second Friday of March, but can be any date).
- Get permission and cooperation from your Principal.
- Create posters, flyers, school newsletter PSAs, and daily announcement PSAs. Call your local media and invite them to attend as well.
- At least one week prior to the event, hang posters and flyers in prominent places on campus. Distribute the flyer, with details on the event, to each faculty and administrator. It is imperative that the event be well publicized. You do NOT want to have students unaware on the day of the event as they could think that their fellow students were really dead, and become traumatized.
Middle School Program
- In addition to the above, it is recommended that you send a flyer home with each student and include a parental permission form for participation in the event.
- Put all of the signed permission forms in box and pull the selected number of “ghosts” at random.
On Ghost-Out Day
- During the morning announcements, state that every hour about eight students will “die.” This will yield, over six hours, the equivalent of one full day of DUI deaths in the United States (about 48).
- Approximately every seven minutes, a person designated as the Grim Reaper goes into a classroom and taps a student on the shoulder. One method is for neither the teacher nor the students to know who the next “victim” will be; alternately, make only SADD members “ghosts.” For Middle Schools, see above.
- Tapped students briefly leave the room and don black T-shirts, choir robes, black arm bands, or “sandwich signs” identifying them as victims of a drunk driving crash. They may be made up to look like corpses, or have a single tear painted on their faces, or whatever else you decide will set them apart as “ghosts.”
- The students return to class and behave well, but they do not sit in their regular seats. Further, the teacher will treat them as if they aren’t there, and the “living” students must do the same. Ghosts can only interact with other ghosts.
- At the end of the day, the Grim Reaper leads a parade of “ghosts” to a school-wide assembly. EMS representatives, student leaders, and/or administrators comment on the problem of drunk driving, and a moment of silence is observed. If there is a person in your area who was impacted by such an accident, they are often very effective speakers at this type of program. Some schools even display photos of all of the students lost to drunk driving crashes from that school. When the assembly ends, students go home like any other day; but none will forget the message.
See the FLORIDA SADD Chapter Manual and/or the Ghost-Out Manual for a sample flyer that you could duplicate for your school’s program, as well as other ideas for this event.
Suicide Awareness Month
“In the past 25 years, while the general incidence of suicide has decreased, the rate for those between 15 and 24 has tripled. It is generally considered to be the second or third most common cause of death among adolescents, even though it is seriously underreported.
No one has advanced a good theory explaining why teens are taking their own lives in greater numbers, but it's important for everyone to be aware of the problem.” (http://www.focusas.com/Suicide.html)
There is a vast amount of information available on this topic, and rather than repeat it here, I’ve included some links that will give you all the facts, information, and program ideas that you need to develop an awareness campaign for your school. It is important that you include your school counselor when planning your campaign. You may also want to include your local mental health agency.
http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/suicide.htm
http://www.yellowribbon.org/
http://www.psych.org/public_info/teen.cfm
National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week (March 16-22)
Website: www.inhalants.org
“One in five students in America has used an inhalant to get high by the time he or she reaches the eighth grade. Parents don't know that inhalants, cheap, legal and accessible products, are as popular among middle school students as marijuana. Even fewer know the deadly effects the poisons in these products have on the brain and body when they are inhaled or "huffed." It's like playing Russian Roulette. The user can die the 1st, 10th or 100th time a product is misused as an inhalant.” www.inhalants.org
Slang Terms for Inhalants
| Street Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Aimies | Amphetamine; amyl nitrite |
| Air blast | Inhalants |
| Ames | Amyl nitrite |
| Amys | Amyl nitrite |
| Aroma of men | Isobutyl nitrite |
| Bagging | Using inhalants |
| Bang | Inhalants; to inject a drug |
| Bolt | Amphetamine; isobutyl nitrite |
| Boppers | Amyl nitrite |
| Bullet | Isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Bullet bolt | Inhalants |
| Buzz bomb | Nitrous oxide |
| Climax | Crack; heroin; isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Discorama | Inhalants |
| Glading | Using inhalant |
| Gluey | One who sniffs or inhales glue |
| Hardware | Isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Heart-on | Inhalants |
| Highball | Inhalants |
| Hippie crack | Inhalants |
| Honey oil | Ketamine; inhalants |
| Huff | Inhalants |
| Huffer | Inhalant abuser |
| Huffing | To sniff an inhalant |
| Kick | Inhalants; getting off a drug habit |
| Laughing gas | Nitrous oxide |
| Locker room | Isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Medusa | Inhalants |
| Moon gas | Inhalants |
| Oz | Inhalants |
| Pearls | Amyl nitrite |
| Poor man's pot | Inhalants |
| Poppers | Isobutyl nitrite; amyl nitrite |
| Quicksilver | Isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Rush | Cocaine; isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Rush Snappers | Isobutyl nitrite |
| Satan's secret | Inhalants |
| Shoot the breeze | Nitrous oxide |
| Snappers | Isobutyl nitrite |
| Sniff | To inhale cocaine; methcathinone; inhalants |
| Snort | To inhale cocaine; use inhalant |
| Snorting | Using inhalant |
| Snotballs | Rubber cement rolled into balls, burned and the fumes are inhaled |
| Spray | Inhalants |
| Texas shoe shine | Inhalants |
| Thrust | Isobutyl nitrite; inhalants |
| Toliet water | Inhalants |
| Tolly | Toluene, chemical contained in many inhalants |
| Toncho | Octane booster which is inhaled |
| Whippets | Nitrous oxide |
| Whiteout | Inhalants; isobutyl nitrite |
| Drug Free AZ, Courtesy of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. | |
The above text is courtesy of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
National Youth Violence Week (March 22-26)
Websites:
www.violencepreventionweek.org/
www.nationalsave.org/main/YVPC.php
The goal of this campaign is to raise awareness and to educate students, teachers, school administrators, counselors, school resource officers, school staff, parents, and the public on effective ways to prevent or reduce youth violence.
During this week-long national education initiative, various activities can be done to demonstrate the positive role young people can have in making their schools and communities safer. Each day of this week focuses on a specific violence prevention strategy. These include promoting respect and tolerance, anger management, resolving conflicts peacefully, supporting safety, and uniting in action.
Please visit the official web page for the National Youth Violence Week for a free Action Kit, and tons of useful information.
Kick Butts Day (March 24)
Kick Butts Day is an annual initiative that encourages activism and leadership among elementary, middle and high school students. It's the day America's kids stand up to tobacco, and America's adults stand up for kids. Kick Butts Day rallies and events take place in every state, and several nations, showing that kids are powerful voices in the fight against tobacco. Scholastic, Inc. (www.scholastic.com) and many other partners assist by promoting the day and distributing materials to thousands of teachers and youth leaders.
The 2010 Kick Butts Day Activity Guide will be available in December 2009 by going to their web site at www.kickbuttsday.org.
