Education Programs
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
Partners in Prevention educates members of Hudson County on topics pertaining to the overall health of the community. Our prevention educational programs touch the lives of individuals on all levels.
Our Classes
Kindergarten – 4th Grade
Prehistoric Pals is an anger management and conflict resolution program for grades Pre-K and Kindergarten, designed to provide your children with the necessary skills to express and deal successfully with feelings of anger and rage. The Prehistoric Pals curriculum consists of six forty minute lessons. Throughout the course, eight prehistoric themed puppet stories offer the children practical and easy to understand alternatives to bullying and violence. As the children start to identify with the characters, they are happy to see their new friends finding peaceful solutions to everyday problems. At the conclusion of each story, the students are encouraged to participate in a related activity designed to reinforce the values presented.
Footprints for Life™ is a research-based primary prevention program that builds assets and teaches important life skills to students in grades two and three, through the use of puppet stories that feature “real life” situations experienced by a children’s soccer team. The program offers many opportunities for students to practice the new skills they have learned in a fun and non-threatening way through group activities and worksheets.
The goal of Footprints for Life is to help young children build a strong foundation of life skills rooted in key social competencies. The social competencies that Footprints addresses are planning and decision-making practice, interpersonal skills, cultural competence, peer pressure, and peaceful conflict resolution — assets identified as promoting positive attitudes and behaviors.
5th Grade – 12th Grade
Keys to InnerVisions (KIV) is an integrated character development curriculum that focuses on cognitive restructuring, chemical dependency, self-concept, and goal achievement. KIV’s approach is cognitive-behavioral, skill-oriented, multi-modal and family-oriented. Program developers describe KIV as an educational curriculum about change, specifically changing the beliefs and behaviors that lead to violence, drug abuse/dependence, school and social failure, and criminal behavior. The program aims to help young people experience hope and a sense of personal power that they can create alternatives to self-destructive behaviors. First implemented in 1990, KIV has been used by juvenile justice systems and schools in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
Note: In addition to the adolescent curriculum, there is also the ‘Possibility Parenting’ program for biological parents, caretakers, foster parents, and any other person in a position to influence the thinking of children and youth (e.g., extended family, teen parents, institutional staff). The goal of Possibility Parenting is to reduce risk factors — family violence, child abuse, unemployment, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and school dropout — by improving the ability of caretakers to raise children who have high self-esteem, an internal locus of control, and emotional balance. The parent curriculum encourages participants to examine these issues in their own lives and to discover ways to promote these qualities in their adolescent children.
Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND) is a research-based, effective, interactive classroom-based substance abuse prevention program that is based on more than two decades of successful research at the University of Southern California.
Project TND targets high school youth, ages 14 to 19 and focuses on building three factors that predict tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use, violence-related behaviors, and other problem behaviors among youth, namely:
Motivation factors (i.e., students’ attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and desires regarding drug use).
Skills (social, self-control, and coping skills).
Decision-making (i.e., how to make decisions that lead to health-promoting behaviors).
The project includes 12 classroom-based sessions, each of which is 40 to 50 minutes in length. The program was designed for implementation over a four-week period (i.e., 3 sessions per week). However, if you need to spread it out, you could implement it twice a week over a six-week period on the condition that all lessons are taught.
“This program has been a blessing to my family and me. It gave me something to look forward to every week. My family and I have been so distraught with the death of my husband. This program gave the opportunity to experience the fact that I was not in this alone. Many others shared my experience of becoming a single parent in the blink of an eye. It has been truly comforting to be here and receive the support I received. I cannot thank you enough”. – Colin Powel Elementary School, Union City
We Are Not Buying It 2.0 (WNBI), is a substance abuse prevention program that focuses on developing media literacy skills for students in sixth to eighth grade. WNBI uses researched and evaluated prevention education strategies to reduce early use of alcohol, marijuana, prescription and over-the-counter medications. WNBI 2.0 is a recent addition to our agency. Identifying that media consumption by youth has shifted dramatically helped Partners in Prevention in the decision to acquire this new program. The program incorporates popular music, television, movies and social media such as YouTube and Facebook to raise awareness of messages about substance abuse that often go unnoticed by our youth.
Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) is a research-validated substance abuse prevention program proven to reduce the risks of alcohol, tobacco, drug abuse, and violence by targeting the major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation of substance use and other risky behaviors. This comprehensive and exciting program provides adolescents and young teens with the confidence and skills necessary to successfully handle challenging situations.
Botvin LifeSkills Training is designed for:
- Elementary school students
- Middle/junior high school students
- High school students
Developed by Dr. Gilbert J. Botvin, a leading prevention expert, Botvin LifeSkills Training is backed by over 30 scientific studies and is recognized as a Model or Exemplary program by an array of governmental agencies including the U.S. Department of Education and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.
Rather than merely teaching information about the dangers of drug abuse, Botvin Lifeskills Training promotes healthy alternatives to risky behavior through activities designed to:
- Teach students the necessary skills to resist social (peer) pressures to smoke, drink, and use drugs
- Help students to develop greater self-esteem and self-confidence
- Enable students to effectively cope with anxiety
- Increase their knowledge of the immediate consequences of substance abuse
- Enhance cognitive and behavioral competency to reduce and prevent a variety of health risk behaviors
The Strengthening Families Program is an evidence-based prevention program for parents and children in higher risk families. SFP consists of parenting skills, children’s life skills, and family skills training courses taught together in 2-hours group sessions preceded by a meal that includes informal family practice time and group leader coaching. SFP is available in a 7-week and 14-week format (one session per week) for parents with children ages 3-5, 6-11 and 12-16.
The parenting sessions review appropriate developmental expectations and encourages:
- Positive interaction with children (such as showing enthusiasm and attention for good behavior and letting the child take the lead in play activities)Increasing attention and praise for positive behaviors
- Positive family communication including active listening and reducing criticism and sarcasm
- Family meetings to improve order and organization
- Effective and consistent discipline including consequences and time-outs
The children’s skills training content focuses on:
- communication skills to improve parents, peers, and teacher relationships
- resilience skills
- problems solving
- peer resistance
- feeling identification
- anger management and coping skills
The family practice sessions allow the parents and children time to practice what they learned in their individual sessions in experiential exercises. This is also a time for the four group leaders to coach and encourage family members for improvements in parent/child interactions.
The WISE Program is a wellness and prevention program targeting older adults, which is designed to help them celebrate healthy aging, make healthy lifestyle choices and avoid substance abuse. It provides valuable educational services to older adults on topics including nutrition and exercise, medication use, stress management, depression and substance abuse.
Created by NJPN and implemented locally by our member agencies, WISE promotes health through education concerning high-risk behaviors in older adults. Since the program was launched in 1996, prevention programs presented by WISE Volunteers have reached over 40,000 individuals.
The WISE Program was awarded a 2009 National Exemplary Award for Innovative Substance Abuse Prevention Programs, Practices, and Policies by The National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD). The award was presented to NJPN at the 2009 National Prevention Network Research Conference in Anaheim, California.
The curriculum has also recently been accepted for review by SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).
Our custom workshops are designed to educate many age groups throughout the community. The topics discussed are centered on the dangers of underage drinking and other drugs. Our most popular program is called Fatal Vision. The Fatal Vision program enables students to experience the effects of alcohol hands on. Fatal Vision® Goggles use special lens technology that allows the wearer to experience a realistic simulation of impairment. Along with the fatal vision goggles we tailor our programs to fit the needs of a particular school or community center. Topics include, but are not limited to, Synthetic Marijuana, Tobacco Cessation, Texting and Driving, Alcohol Misuse and Abuse.
Fatal Vision® Impairment Goggles are an internationally popular evidenced-based prevention tool used to educate people of all ages about the consequences of alcohol misuse and abuse. Fatal Vision® Goggles use special lens technology that allows the wearer to experience a realistic simulation of impairment. Fatal Vision® Goggles simulate six distinct impairment levels and are available in a clear or shaded version to simulate either daytime or nighttime conditions. A popular activity to conduct with Fatal Vision® is to perform Standard Field Sobriety Tests such as walking a straight line heal-to-toe or the one-legged stand. Due to the loss of balance and equilibrium produced by the goggles, the wearer will exhibit behaviors that are similar to that of someone under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.
Fatal Vision® Benefits:
- Engaging and hands-on
- Promotes a clear prevention and awareness lesson
- Simple to use
- Easily implemented into existing awareness and prevention programs
- Provides an experience that people will remember
Contact Us
Would you like to bring any of these programs to your school or community?
Contact our Education Supervisor, Pam Presinal, by filling out the form below or calling us at 201-552-2264.