STUDENTS COMPLETE ANTI-GANG PROGRAM

With much fanfare, St. Vincent De Paul's grade school held a ceremony in honor of its first 48 students graduating from GREAT, or Gang Related Education And Training.

The nine-week course led by community police officers Ike Hammonds and Cpl. Charlie Herbst promotes the development of life skills in a world that tempts kids with drugs, gangs and other illegal activity.

"They have been great," said Sharon Thompson, the school principal. "This has been a good program for us to get involved with."

Students and teachers agreed that the program was beneficial because they learned something in addition to the organized anti-drug message schools have been using for several years.

"This is a program that expands more on developing life skills than the DARE program," said Mary Sue Sharp, a seventh grade teacher. "It's beneficial to the kids and creates a positive relationship with police officers."

Sharp said DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, sends a simple, stern anti-drug message to students. Although that message is important, she said learning other life skills to cope with the other negative aspects of society also is important to the kids. GREAT does that, she said.

The students also had the chance to do role playing, she said. During the program, students played the roles of parents having to discipline unruly children and other roles that made them think about situations from other people's points of view.

"Some of the role playing really surprised them," Sharp said.

In addition to graduate certificates, many of the seventh graders participated in a play written by fellow student Jeffrey Overbey. The play portrayed the negative aspects of being involved in a gang and using drugs.

"I asked everyone if they wanted to do this," said Overbey, 13, "and when 90 percent of the hands went up, I decided it was a good idea to write the play."

Overbey said he wrote one scene at a time until he finished the 20-minute production. He served as videographer and prop man during the production for fifth and sixth graders Wednesday before his graduation presentation.

Hammonds and Herbst are pleased with the enthusiasm shown by the the seventh graders over the last few weeks.

"Everyone has been excellent," Hammonds told the seventh graders. "We can really tell you got something out of this."

GREAT graduations also are scheduled soon at St. Mary's and Trinity Lutheran School.