Prime for Life Under 21

“PRIME For Life” is a program designed to gently but powerfully challenge common beliefs and attitudes that directly contribute to high-risk alcohol and drug use. The content, process and sequence of PRIME For Life are carefully developed to achieve both prevention and intervention goals.

The program goals are:
1. to reduce problems caused by high-risk drinking or drug use;
2. to reduce the risk for long-term health problems and short-term impairment problems;
3. To help people successfully protect the things they value.

Using persuasion-based teaching, instructors use a variety of teaching approaches, including interactive presentation and small group discussion. Participants use work books throughout the course to complete a number of individual and group activities. Material is presented using a DVD platform with animation, full-motion video clips, and audio clips to enhance the presentation.

Who Benefits from PRIME For Life?

PRIME For Life is often used for youth ages 13 to 20 who already engage in high-risk drinking or drug use or who are in a group likely to begin making choices that increase risk for problems. Thousands of young people throughout the country are taught the curriculum through juvenile justice systems, underage DUI programs, court diversion, school student assistance, and similar programs

 

TEA (Tobacco Education Awareness)

Project Alert

Project ALERT is a school-based prevention program for middle or junior high school students that focuses on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use. It seeks to prevent adolescent nonusers from experimenting with these drugs, and to prevent youths who are already experimenting from becoming more regular users or abusers. Based on the social influence model of prevention, the program is designed to help motivate young people to avoid using drugs and to teach them the skills they need to understand and resist prodrug social influences. The curriculum is comprised of 11 lessons in the first year and 3 lessons in the second year. Lessons involve small-group activities, question-and-answer sessions, role-playing, and the rehearsal of new skills to stimulate students' interest and participation. The content focuses on helping students understand the consequences of drug use, recognize the benefits of nonuse, build norms against use, and identify and resist prodrug pressures.

 

N.O.T. (Not On Tobacco)

This smoking cessation program is facilitated for students who are interested in quitting smoking.
N-O-T is the American Lung Association's school-based voluntary program designed to help high school students:
- stop smoking
- reduce the number of cigarettes smoked
- increase healthy lifestyle behaviors
- improve life management skills

N-O-T includes a 10-session curriculum and booster sessions conducted by facilitators who are identified through a set of selection criteria and training emphasizes nicotine addiction, curriculum content and implementation, as well as group process. N-O-T is gender-sensitive, separating participants by gender, and tailors content and delivery to the adolescent population. N-O-T emphasizes daily life management skills such as stress management and healthy lifestyle behaviors such as nutrition and exercise. It also offers awards and incentives to the teens and facilitators, and includes evaluation and mental health referral protocols.

 

Reconnecting Youth

Reconnecting Youth: A Peer Group Approach to Building Life Skills (RY) is an 80-lesson curriculum that has been proven effective in helping high-risk youth in grades 9-12 raise their GPAs and manage their anger, while decreasing drug use, depression, and suicide risk. The research-based RY curriculum is divided into four major units: Self-Esteem Enhancement, Decision-Making, Personal Control, and Interpersonal Communication. It is unique in that it is a comprehensive, sustained, semester-long intervention that integrates small-group work and life-skills training models to effectively enhance the personal and social protective factors of high-risk youth. A variety of school personnel throughout the nation have been trained by program staff to successfully implement the curriculum.

 

LifeSkills Training

LifeSkills Training (LST) is a research-validated substance abuse prevention program proven to reduce the risks of alcohol, tobacco, drug abuse, and violence by targeting the major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation of substance use and other risky behaviors. This comprehensive and exciting program provides adolescents and young teens with the confidence and skills necessary to successfully handle challenging situations.

Developed by Dr. Gilbert J. Botvin, a leading prevention expert, LifeSkills Training is backed by over 20 scientific studies and is recognized as a Model or Exemplary program by an array of government agencies including the U.S. Department of Education and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Rather than merely teaching information about the dangers of drug abuse, LifeSkills Training promotes healthy alternatives to risky behavior through activities designed to:
- Teach students the necessary skills to resist social (peer) pressures to smoke, drink, and use drugs
- Help students to develop greater self-esteem and self-confidence
- Enable students to effectively cope with anxiety
- Increase their knowledge of the immediate consequences of substance abuse
- Enhance cognitive and behavioral competency to reduce and prevent a variety of health risk behaviors

 

SkillStreaming

SkillStreaming addresses the social skill needs of students who display aggression, immaturity, withdrawal, or other problem behaviors. This newly revised book offers the most up-to-date information for implementing the SkillStreaming approach, which utilizes modeling, role playing, performance feedback, and transfer (homework). Students develop competence in dealing with interpersonal conflicts and learn to use self-control. The curriculum contains 60 skill lessons and includes five skill groups: Classroom Survival Skills, Friendship-Making Skills, Dealing with Feelings, Alternatives to Aggression, and Dealing with Stress

 

LIP (Leaders In Prevention)

A.D.A.P.T. has been facilitating a LIP group since it’s inception in the state through Teen Institute in 1999. Each year ADAPT provides an opportunity for eight Lin-Wood students to attend a four-day residential experience. Participants gain the skills, knowledge and motivation necessary to formulate action plans to implement prevention efforts and initiatives within their school environments.

 

SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions)

Experiential Education

The Principles of Experiential Education are as follows:
- Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis and synthesis.
- Experiences are structured to require the learner(2) to take initiative, make decisions and be accountable for results.
- Throughout the experiential learning process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.
- Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, soulfully and/or physically. This involvement produces a perception that the learning task is authentic.
- The results of the learning are personal and form the basis for future experience and learning.
- Relationships are developed and nurtured: learner to self, learner to others and learner to the world at large.
- The educator(3) and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking and uncertainty, because the outcomes of experience cannot totally be predicted.
- Opportunities are nurtured for learners and educators to explore and examine their own values.
- The educator's primary roles include setting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, insuring physical and emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.
- The educator recognizes and encourages spontaneous opportunities for learning.
- Educators strive to be aware of their biases, judgments and pre-conceptions, and how these influence the learner.
- The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn from natural consequences, mistakes and successes.

 

MET/CBT 5 (Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy 5)

MET/CBT 5 is an evidence-based, 5 session youth substance abuse treatment model. Two motivational sessions focus on identifying factors that motivate youth to change their substance using behavior. Three cognitive behavioral sessions follow to teach youth practical coping and refusal skills.

 

Community Service

A.D.A.P.T. offers monthly community service opportunities for students to participate in to help instill a sense of community for the youth who participate. Community service opportunities include:
- World Play Day
- Kick Butts Day
- Polar Express
- and more

Summer Adventure Program

A.D.A.P.T. and The Center for Adolescent Health will once again be providing a summer adventure program for at-risk high school students. This program will take place one day a week during the summer and transportation will be provided. In addition there will also be a backpacking or surf camp trip offered one weekend each month.