MAHANOY CITY - Ninth-grade students at Mahanoy Area High School and three other county schools will participate in an online program to help them make safer and healthier decisions about alcohol.
District Superintendent Joie L. Green announced the AlcoholEdu program at the Aug. 22 school board meeting, with information provided by district social worker Andrea M. Caulfield.
AlcoholEdu will be funded through a grant received through the Schuylkill County Drug and Alcohol Program. The program was developed by EverFi Inc., an education technology company whose goal is teach, assess and certify students in critical skills.
"The AlcoholEdu program is not a survey, but an online curriculum program that will ask students their opinions regarding the impact of alcohol use," Green said. "The program will teach students that the effect of alcohol is three-tiered: personal, family and community."
When the program is concluded, the school will received a report regarding the perceptions before and after the program.
"The AlcoholEdu program is conducted entirely online," SCDAP Prevention Services Coordinator Diane Rowland said Monday. "The student will get a username and password and log in to the AlcoholEdu website. It takes about four class periods to complete the program. The idea of the program is to delay the onset of the use of alcohol. It takes an all-encompassing approach. It helps the students see that alcohol use doesn't just affect them. Of course it affects them personally, but it shows them how abusing alcohol can affect their family and their community and the far-reaching effects that alcohol can have."
According to the website description, students travel through a community to better understand the risks of drinking alcohol and apply their learning by designing a social marketing billboard for their peers. The topics covered are blood alcohol concentration, standard drink definition, alcohol's effects on the mind and body, protective strategies and bystander intervention.
"At the end, they'll have the opportunity to design a billboard or anti-alcohol advertisement. They'll be able to take everything that they learned in this curriculum and apply it practically so they can take this information and try to persuade others about the dangers of alcohol use," Rowland explained.
Rowland said the website is very interactive and the students will be able to work at their own pace.
"With this, the students will also do a pre- and post-survey to get their perceptions and attitudes on alcohol use in general," Rowland said. "With the students completing surveys before and after the program, the company can send a report to the school district on any change in attitude. It will be a really nice piece of data that the district will get. I've seen sample reports from other districts and the company provides a lot of feedback they get from the kids. I'm excited about it. It's a good opportunity."
According to Rowland, this is the first time the AlcoholEdu program will be used in Schuylkill County. In addition to Mahanoy Area, the program will be used Pottsville Area, Schuylkill Haven Area and Pine Grove Area school districts.
"They volunteered to have the program come to their districts," Rowland said. "Alcohol is always an issue. It's where kids start. We thought it would be something very worthwhile to try. So we have the four districts who were kind enough to sign on and give it a try. We hope to get some good results from it."
For more information about the program, go to www.everfi.com/alcoholedu-for-high-school. A short video on the website explains the program.