Teachers, staff start school year early with workshops
HAMPSTEAD — Teachers, administrators, nurses and other school staff members recently attended two workshops designed to help them in the upcoming school year.
The events were sponsored by the Sanborn/Timberlane Safe & Drug Free Community Coalition, a collaboration of community members, organizations, businesses and schools. The coalition's overriding purpose is to promote and support positive and healthy lifestyle choices for youths and their families.
The workshops focused on suicide prevention and over-the-counter drug abuse.
"Those were some powerful workshops the coalition put on," said Bob Mailloux, a Hampstead Middle School counselor. "They were intense, timely and helpful."
The coalition funded Rachel's Challenge for the coalition schools two years ago and out of that came the Hampstead Middle School's Friends of Rachel Club, reaching down into the student population to join forces in support of making positive and healthy choices, according to Pat Jacobellis, a middle-school counselor.
Friends of Rachel Club members performed a variety of skits relating to making positive choices at the elementary and middle schools last year. Jacobellis said it's almost always more powerful for students to hear those messages from other students.
The coalition has purchased some Kids on the Block puppets for the new school year, Jacobellis said. These puppets demonstrate various disabilities and come with specific curriculum.
The curriculum centers on learning to accept people with differences. The puppets were created in 1977 in response to the law change that brought disabled children into the classroom with non-disabled students.
The puppet population has expanded and now also includes characters with learning disabilities. New puppets are designed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and issues such as sexual abuse prevention and alternatives to bullying and violence, she said.
