Pre-school drug manual launched

A drug education teacher’s manual targeted at children of pre-school age is now available for use by Early Childhood Education practitioners.

The manual was launched by National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit on Monday.

Director of the National Drug Abuse Prevention Unit, Jacinta Bannis, says the manual was launched as part of the Unit’s strategy to reduce first use of drugs among students.

“We at the National drug abuse prevention unit believe that drug demand reduction effort must start early and early childhood education is the best place to start,” she said.

Bannis says the drug education manual is a tool which will greatly assist pre-school teachers in teaching drug education.

The development of the pre-school manual is a follow up to training sessions held for pre-school teachers.

“Two workshops were held in 2010 with pre-school teachers to introduce them to teaching drug education in early childhood institutions. While the teachers welcomed the training they felt that they needed more guidelines to make them comfortable in teaching the topic,” Bannis stated.

She confirmed that following these workshops, they were able to identify some teachers who still have difficulty in teaching students about drugs.

“Even today we have difficulty with some teachers teaching drug education at Primary schools however we believed that if adopted proper guidelines for them it would have made it more comfortable for them to impart the knowledge to students,” she noted.

Bannis is hoping that pre-school teachers will see the need to integrate drug education in a wide range of subjects.

“We would like to emphasize that drug education should not be treated as a separate subject. We believe that it should be integrated into the school’s curriculum in subjects such as Language Arts, science and Social Studies,” she added.

The drug prevention official is suggesting that teachers play a greater role in educating children about drugs.

“Drugs are not Child’s play and therefore teachers must help children to build confidence and self esteem,” Bannis stated. “Teachers must educate children about drug use and guide them to make healthy choices.”

Early Childhood Education Specialist, Beverly Leblanc, was instrumental in assisting the Ministry of Education in developing the drug education manual.

Leblanc has fully endorsed the manual, describing it as a practical tool.

“If you look through the manual you will see that we used a thematic approach. The reason why we did that was because we wanted the lessons to be relevant. I do hope that the teachers will use the lesson plans outlined in the manual and make drug education fun and exciting,” Leblanc noted.

To complement the drug education manual, the National drug abuse prevention unit will for the next two years embark on a parenting program within the school system  which will seek to ensure that what is taught at school is reinforced at home.