Pubdate: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 Source: Seattle Times (WA) Copyright: 1998 The Seattle Times Company Contact: http://www.seattletimes.com/ Author: Tan Vinh NEW DRUG EDUCATION PROGRAM APPEALS TO OLDER KIDS Music blares out of Darlynn Bailey's fourth-period health class. Her students are screaming, dancing and jumping on tables. Bailey? She watches as a police officer urges these 11th-graders to get wilder and louder. There is a lesson in this. Really. "One of the things is finding out who you are and not worry about what people think of you," said Officer S.T. Riley. Riley's Scope LifeRide is a new program created by the Kirkland Police Department and a Chicago motivational speaker to address teen angst and drug abuse through video clips and music. It's MTV meets D.A.R.E. At a time when the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program is coming under fire for questionable effectiveness, Kirkland's Scope LifeRide is gaining nationwide attention. The Des Moines and Aberdeen police departments now use it as well. Other cities, including Chicago, are looking at the 12-course program. On the Eastside, the program is taught in Lake Washington and Juanita high schools at least once a week. On a recent afternoon, students at Lake Washington High School strolled into Bailey's class to music blasting from the speakers. "Life can be like a roller coaster," Riley told the 29 students. "You have your ups and your downs. I'm going to challenge you to take that roller-coaster ride." An emotional ride is what they then got in the 55-minute presentation. Some laughed. Some cried. A lot sweated. Riley played a high-spirited game of "Name That Tune" as part of a team-building exercise. He showed clips of domestic violence that made some cover their eyes. Some cringed hearing 911 calls from people who later were killed. The police officer brought tears when he turned off the lights and turned on soft music to get the young people to visualize poignant moments in their lives. "It was cool," 16-year-old Melissa Palmer said afterward. "He's not talking to us but interacting with us. We usually get lectures on drugs and alcohol, and no one wants to listen to that." Not preaching is the program's tenet. It was a lesson Riley learned when he started Scope - short for Schools & Cops Opting for Positive Education - three years ago. He created a curriculum similar to D.A.R.E.'s and found students lost interest. "It was going in one ear and out the other," he recalled. Enter motivational speaker Eddie Slowikowski. "I saw this guy speak at a national conference in St. Louis, and I saw him make 300 police officers dancing on tables, and I was like, `Oh my gosh, if he can do this, think what he can do with the kids,' " Riley said. Slowikowski, who runs a human-resource consulting firm in Chicago, introduced his high-energy LifeRide program, which Riley combined with his Scope curriculum. "As a speaker, you better get them into the palm of your hands," Slowikowski said. "That way you can move them to where you want to take them." He showed Riley how to use lighting, music and rhetoric to set the tone and get the message across. Surveys indicated students wanted more of the program, Riley said. Attendance also went up on the days Scope LifeRide is taught. The program was never meant to compete with D.A.R.E., which targets middle-school students. Scope LifeRide instead focuses on getting high-school students to talk about dealing with issues such as date rape, drunken driving and goal setting. But similar to criticism of D.A.R.E., the concern is whether students retain the knowledge or the message after the program ends. Riley and other Scope LifeRide supporters contend retention is greater because his audience is older. Teachers also say Scope's presentation is more flexible and spontaneous than D.A.R.E.'s. Open communication with students is a priority for Riley, who wanted a better relationships with the teens. Riley and other officers in schools use Scope LifeRide as an icebreaker. And Riley talks about his run-in with the law as a teen. The idea is to show that a police officer is just a human being who happens to wear a badge, he said. He jumps on the table to lead the students in a rendition of the song "YMCA." "How many programs do you know," he says, "that can get students up in front of the class and dance?" - --- Checked-by: Patrick Henry