Schools
School Board: Red Ribbon Week Offers New Activities
Events will include an expo with helicopters and stress-busting aids, as well as more focus on using healthy lifestyle choices to reduce the temptation to drink up or light up.
Geneva school children will have several new ways to celebrate this year, organizer Julie Pouilly told the Board of Education Tuesday. Board members approved a resolution supporting the district’s participation in Red Ribbon Week.
The annual drug-abuse-prevention celebration will officially kick off Saturday, Oct. 22, though preliminary events started Oct. 1 with the Park District’s run/walk.
“This year we want to focus on the underlying issues that lead to drug and alcohol abuse,” Pouilly noted. Those issues include poor nutrition, poor physical condition and chronic stress as well as peer pressure and access to alcohol and illegal drugs.
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In addition to the candlelight vigil, slated for 7 p.m. Oct. 23 at City Hall, the Red Ribbon Committee will host an exposition from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, at . A host of addiction intervention agencies will exhibit there, including Hearts of Hope, Breaking Free, Gateway Foundation Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and TriCity Family Services.
A Drug Enforcement Agency helicopter will land and take off at the expo, and people who attend will be able to get StressDots for free. The small plastic dots adhere to the back of the hand and change colors based on the wearer’s skin temperature—much like the “mood rings” of the 1970s. Lower skin temperatures indicate higher levels of physical stress, Pouilly said. StressDot wearers will be able to monitor their stress levels throughout the day and consciously reduce stress by doing breathing exercises.
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“I put one on to show my family and it turned black (the color signaling the highest stress level.) I realized I was modeling stressed-out behavior, so I spent a couple of hours in the hammock over the weekend, and it turned blue,” said Pouilly.
“We want to teach kids how to recognize when they’re under stress and how to manage it before it builds to the point where they feel they need drugs or alcohol to relieve it,” Pouilly explained.
The committee also added a new twist to the elementary schools’ food drive to benefit ’s food pantry.
“The St. Charles Police Department loaned us some vehicle scales,” Pouilly said. “When each school delivers its collected food to the pantry, we’ll weigh the car, unload the food and weigh the car again. This will give us, for the first time, the ability to determine which school donated the most food.”
The winning school will have its named engraved on a traveling plaque that it will display until next year’s food drive.
And the expo will introduce warnings about the substances marketed as , which is sold in some area stores as potpourri. North Aurora resident , whose teen-age son Max died after smoking synthetic marijuana last spring, will speak at the event.
“Kids who would never try illegal drugs are trying this stuff because they think it’s legal. We want to tell parents that there’s no such thing as ‘not my kid’ anymore,” Pouilly.
For more information about Red Ribbon Week activities, e-mail Pouilly at jeesp@comcast.net.
