A graduation ceremony was held last Friday to celebrate Clearview fifth graders’ completion of the KIDS Choice program.

 

KIDS Choice is a 12-week curriculum for fifth grade students to learn about bullying prevention, Internet safety, and drug prevention and awareness. The acronym KIDS stands for kindness, intelligence, decency and safety, focusing on the positive choices students have available to them. 

 

Sherburne County developed the KIDS Choice program in 2009 after the election of Sheriff Joel Brott. They hadn’t offered DARE (drug abuse resistance education) for a number of years, and Brott wanted to fill in the gap.

 

“Things had changed quite a bit,” said Brott. “Social media and the Internet had come to the forefront so we wanted to include those in the program.”

 

Investigator Jamie Wrobel, school resource officer for Clearview and Becker school districts, taught the program to the students. 

 

“We cover everything; bullying prevention, cyber bullying, online games and social media sites, plus the usual drugs, alcohol, and tobacco,” said Wrobel. 

 

“There are a couple things the kids always remember,” said fifth grade teacher Joy Palmquist. “The photo of the hairy tongue you can get if you’re a smoker, and the fatal vision goggles, which are also known as beer goggles. The kids get to wear them and do different things; it gives them the feeling of being intoxicated, they have no coordination.”

 

Sheriff Brott spoke to the students at the ceremony, telling them they could be anything they wanted to be in life, however the message is that they could ruin a promising life by making poor choices. 

 “I’ll tell you a little secret. It’s not cool to do drugs,” said Brott. “Start living the dream by living drug, alcohol and violence free.”

 

He told the audience a lot has changed since he was a fifth grader, and explained part of the reason why the KIDS Choice program was developed.

 

“One of the last cases I investigated before becoming sheriff was of a young girl who made a poor choice and met someone on the Internet,” he said. “It ended up badly for her.”

 

At the completion of the 12-week program each of the students wrote an essay about what they’d learned, which they then read to their respective classrooms. Kyla Walker, Abby Sawatzke and Jocie Abel’s classmates chose them to read their essays during the ceremony.

 

After the readings, the students were presented with certificates of completion and together they sang the song I Can Be, conducted by music teacher Karen Ingeman.

 

Because of how rapidly things in today’s society change, both Brott and Wrobel stressed the KIDS Choice program is relooked at every year to ensure they’re teaching students the most up-to-date and pertinent information available.