Anneliese S.

D.A.R.E. Essay

        My class and I had Officer Mark as our D.A.R.E. teacher. He is awesome. We learned a lot from him.  Officer Mark has taught us about drugs and smoking, bullying, the D.A.R.E. decision making model and much more.

        Smoking is very bad for you. It is illegal for people who are under the age 18 to smoke. There are 200 known chemicals in cigarette smoke, one of them is nicotine. Nicotine is a chemical that is very addictive and that makes people want to smoke more and more. Nicotine makes it very hard to smoke just once or stop smoking once they start it.

Almost 50,000 deaths a year are because of secondhand smoking. Secondhand smoking is when somebody around you smokes alot and you breathing in the smoke. One of the effects it has on people who do it is it interferes with the brain and can cause heart and lung disease. Do not try cigarettes at all costs.

There are 75,000 alcohol related deaths each year.  When I say related I mean it does not have to be the person who is drinking, like if someone is on the highway drinking in the car and gets into an accident with another person, that person gets injured even though they were not drinking. Alcohol is not good for your body at all and it has lots of bad effects when you drink it and there is nothing good about it. Just a few effects of alcohol are: loss of coordination, poor judgment, memory loss, slow reflexes, and loss of self control.

        Another thing we learned about in our D.A.R.E. classes is bullying and it happens mostly at school but sometimes other places to. Bullying is when someone repeatedly picks on one specific kid. That bully either says mean things to them or threatens them. Another way is by physically hurting the person they are picking on.

Another important thing we learned about in D.A.R.E. was the dangers of peer pressure.  Peer pressure is when a friend or someone close to you is doing something bad and asks if you want to join in.  It can be hard to say no but it’s really important to do the right thing even if no one else is.  An example of peer pressure is if your friend takes money from someone and you catch them.  Then they tell you not to tell on them.  Another example is when your friends are being mean and excluding someone and you feel pressure to join in instead of being nice to everyone.  These are examples of peer pressure because you don’t know what to do: choose your friend’s side so you can stay friends and do the right thing.

A fun game we played in D.A.R.E. was D.A.R.E. baseball. In the game there are two teams and one person from a team comes up, they ask for a single, double, or triple question. The higher the level the harder the question, then you get to go around the bases. It is lots of fun.

In one of the first D.A.R.E. classes we were taught the decision making model.  Define: Describe the problem, challenge, or opportunity, Asses: What are your choices, Respond: Make a choice. Use the facts and information you have gathered, Evaluate: Review the decision. Did you make a good choice?

My top three favorite things in D.A.R.E. this year were D.A.R.E. baseball, learning about peer pressure, and the facts about doing drugs and smoking. 

My pledge is that I will never ever drink, smoke, do drugs, bully or give in to peer pressure.  D.A.R.E. has taught me so much about lots of things that can really help me when I get older. Thank you!