It seems there's nothing quite like a global pandemic to completely alter our reality - both actual and perceived. Did the break this year seem even more like a mere blip on summer's radar? And did fall's re-entry feel more like in-laws showing up "just for dinner" and staying a month? If you are feeling more than a little anxiety than in past years, you are definitely not alone! As you head to your classrooms and other community and after-school programs--virtual and otherwise--keep this issue of the Educator handy for the very latest on all things ALERT.

 

Most of us would agree that this year has been challenging like no other in our lifetime. But before we send 2020 to its well-deserved corner of the classroom so it can think long and hard about its actions, let’s again consider how critical our goals of deterring substance misuse among youth are. Perhaps now more than ever, with recent reports of increased rates of adolescent mental health problems and elevated drug use, we need to remember how we are providing our youth with truly valuable tools to help them chart a path of making healthy choices in this world  - a world that is often ready to reach for the nearest quick-fix to medicate its pain and suffering.

 

Please reach out if you have any questions regarding program training or delivery.  We’re always here to help with any issues that come up as you implement Project ALERT.

• Are you serious about empowering middle school aged students to resist and reduce the use of drugs including alcohol, tobacco/nicotine, vaping, marijuana, and opioids?

• Do you want to enhance student social-emotional learning, including communication skills, self-efficacy, and positive decision-making?

• Do you want to build on your efforts to reduce absenteeism, poor performance, and disruptive behavior?

 

A new Project ALERT-GTO (Getting to Outcomes) study presents a rare opportunity to help boost efforts to keep youth healthy and drug-free.  Project ALERT, an evidence-based substance use prevention education curriculum with proven positive results for over 25 years, is joining forces with GTO, an evidence-based implementation framework that provides training and ongoing coaching to help organizations launch programs more effectively and get their desired outcomes. If you have been looking to implement a program like Project ALERT but have not had the resources to jump start it, this study may be able to help!

 

RAND Corporation, the nonprofit institution that runs Project ALERT and GTO, is looking to partner with a limited number of school districts in California, Colorado, Ohio, and Washington (and possibly more) beginning in the 2021-22 school year.  Districts must have five or more schools with grades 7 and 8 in the same building. Teachers who participate in the study will receive stipends to participate in trainings and free access to Project ALERT and GTO materials, as well as enhanced support to implement ALERT effectively. Participating schools will receive an honoriarum for their support of the study while the district will receive assistance in sustaining the program when the study ends.

 

To learn more about how you can receive an evidence-based drug prevention program and coaching support at no cost:

 

• Visit our website

• Send us an email: ProjectAlertGTO@rand.org

• Call us toll-free at 1.833.634.1531

 

We will arrange a follow-up discussion and answer any of your questions.  We would love to have you join us, but spots are going fast!

 

Study funded by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Many of you have inquired over the past few months about distance learning options. Project ALERT has some recommendations for maintaining fidelity as you switch delivery modes in the current school year.  With all our materials being free, online, and in the public domain, we feel we might be ahead of the COVID curve.  From the home page, click on the big green button to launch to our new web page that offers some guidance for many of the activities that comprise the curriculum.

 

To provide further assistance for screen school, we’re planning on releasing some sample distance learning modules for Google Classroom later this fall.  Stay tuned!

 

For those of you who are developing e-learning lessons for your ALERT classrooms, would you consider sharing them with us for the benefit of your colleagues?  We would be happy to make them available for the greater Project ALERT teaching community.  We know some of you have made very impressive, elaborate lesson modules – but if simple is more your style, note that the Power Point slides that accompany each lesson plan could serve as a springboard for creating some fun and interesting online lessons.

 

Remember that, however you adapt your lessons for screen school, the most important activity you can do with your students is to help them practice their resistance self-efficacy skills. Have them create their own refusal lines, share their examples, and practice them as they Zoom together, and--always-- validate their responses and encourage their efforts and participation to help build their confidence to use these skills when they ultimately will be faced with pressures to use substances.

Thankfully, our continuing lockdown hasn’t hampered our productivity too much.  In fact, it feels like we’ve never been busier!  Over the last couple of months, we’ve been making significant edits to make our annual revisions to the instruction manual, including updating prevalence of use data from the 2019 Monitoring the Future report for all the key substances Project ALERT addresses. We’ve also added more references to vaping and opioids, both in the core lessons and in the booster review lessons.

 

What about 2020? Dare we ask, given all its mayhem? Actually, the news might be a little better.  We'll find out in a few months if MTF's annual report agrees with the CDC's preliminary 2020 findings of "the first vaping decrease in youth in three years."

 

All updated individual lessons and the complete lesson manual (over 400 pages) can be accessed at projectalert.com/account.

Hot off the presses is our newest poster on opioids.  The latest addition to the group is part of the plan to retire Lesson 8 on inhalants (this will eventually be retooled as a supplemental guide) and officially replace it with the newer lesson on prescription opioids and heroin. 

 

We’ve edited a few of our other posters with a smoking-only focus to now include vaping.  With these revisions, you can be sure that you’re using the most updated materials available as you deliver the Project ALERT curriculum to your students.  All Project ALERT posters are available in 3 sizes – from an 8 ½ x 11 standard handout, 12 x 18 large handout, and 24 x 36 poster.

 

Older versions of all lesson posters are located here. For the new opioid poster and the updated smoking posters, send us an email and we’ll send the electronic files to you.

Over the next few months, we’ll be making some additional changes to the curriculum. Our longstanding lesson on inhalants will pass the baton to our newer component on opioids, which was originally published in 2018 as an alternate to Core Lesson 8. The opioid lesson is scheduled to take its official place in the lineup in spring 2021.

 

A lot of careful consideration has gone into this decision. When Project ALERT was first in development about 30 years ago, inhalant use among youth had been making significant annual strides, with lifetime use peaking in the mid-1990s at around 22%. Today, that figure hovers around 9%. Additionally, in recent years, we've seen sobering increases in misuse of prescription painkillers. In LA County alone, in 2013, Fentanyl was a contributing factor in only 3% of overdose-related deaths, with steady and sharp increases reported in 2018 (25%) and 2019 (33%). As of March and April 2020--the first two months of the pandemic--that number has skyrocketed to 50%.[1] As we've watched this and similar drugs increase in popularity, we've felt a strong sense of urgency to elevate the topic of opioids and heroin and make the lesson a bona fide member of the core curriculum.

 

The inhalant content is not going away forever. We will be re-tooling the lesson as a supplemental guide in 2021. So if you’re finding that this is still a significant issue in your community, you will have access to the material, including associated handouts and homework assignments, all rigorously tested and validated by Project ALERT's early randomized controlled trials.

 

 

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[1] https://www.ocregister.com/2020/08/28/smart-curious-14-dead-fentanyls-reign-of-terror-widens-during-pandemic/