Grover Hill Dare Graduation

The Paulding County Sheriff’s Office D.A.R.E. program held its graduation for Grover Hill Elementary fifth graders on April 19, 2017. Each student was required to write an essay before they could graduate. D.A.R.E. program consist of 12 lessons and the essay gives the students a chance to reflect back on the lessons.

Essays described what they learned and how the D.A.R.E. program can help them make safe, responsible choices.  “Once I receive all the essays, winners are selected and they receive a prize.  This year the two essay winners were Kyla Hurd and Alexandria Stephey,” says D.A.R.E. Deputy Mendez, “I am proud of each and every student and hope they will always

Two winners of D.A.R.E. Alexandria Stephey, Kyla Hurd, Deputy Mendez

be safe and responsible.”  Each 5th grader who completed the essay received a Certificate of Completion at graduation and a D.A.R.E. t-shirt.

“I truly appreciate our Paulding County Commissioners assisting the D.A.R.E program and covering majority of the costs beyond grant monies and donations,” said Sheriff Jason K. Landers.

Individuals and organizations can send D.A.R.E donations to Paulding County Sheriff’s Office, 500 East Perry Street, Paulding, Ohio  45879.  All donations are deposited directly into the D.A.R.E fund account.

D.A.R.E. Essay

By: Kyla Hurd

D!A!R!E! What does that spell? D.A.R.E. In the D.A.R.E. program we learn how to make good decisions. D.A.R.E. means Define, Assess, Respond, and Evaluate. We have been in D.A.R.E. for about several weeks now and every Wednesday we get a very new lesson. In this essay I will be talking about the D.A.R.E. program and what I have learned. Let’s get started.

What have learned in the dare program? I learned about being responsible, drugs and alcohol, risks and consequences, effective communication, stress, and bullying. I know it sounds a lot of stuff to learn, but it’s all really basic knowledge. We deal with these things in our everyday lives. We can stress over something really small and make it in a bug deal, but we can relieve this stress with a stress ball, screaming in pillow, or just calming your breathing. Communication is really important, it’s how you express your feelings. I don’t know about you, but I’m mot a good communicator. We learned about risk and consequences, there are bad and good consequences. Risks are when you take a chance and consequence is what happens afterwards. I learned about being responsible or at least being more responsible. Also, we learned about drugs and alcohol, which we all know is very bad for us in many ways. Certain types of drugs, like the bad kind, can kill you, so can alcohol.

What is the D.A.R.E. decision making model? It’s what I was talking about before. Define, Assess, Respond, and Evaluate. These are ways to solve a decision or a problem. Here’s and example: You play on a hockey team. Some of your friends are wanting to invite you to go roller skating, but it’s on the same day as practice. How would you decide what to do? I have used this before but I was in cheerleading and by bestest friend asked me to go with here to the movies. I asked myself if it’s more important to go to practice and possibly get better with my toe touches, or go see the movie I want to watch really badly. I decided practice is more important, so I told my friend and she understood and we are still besties to this very day.  I told her that we can see it another day and we did. That’s how we all decide. We face problems everyday of our lives. Maybe we are deciding if we want to ride a bike or walk instead of driving to not pollute our air that we breathe.

I plan to use the things i’ve learned during D.A.R.E. in everyday life. I can take what I learned about drugs and alcohol and stay away form it, so I don’t get bad side effects. I can also use what i’ve learned in other lessons to stay away or act like I’m suppose to. I can use what i’ve learned to act responsibly. Also, so we can reach other people’s approval.

We learned a lot during dare and I learned a lot too. This is the end of my essay.