Red Ribbon Week
It is Red Ribbon Week, and we are celebrating being drug-free. Today’s theme is “Sock it to drugs,” and we all wore kuh-razy socks! I’m the one with the zebra and gray argyle. My para has the purple argyle. The others are my students.
This morning, I gave my little shpeil about Red Ribbon Week. It went something along the lines of, “When Red Ribbon Week is over, I don’t shoot up my veins and say ‘Drugs, baby!’” (I actually said that). ”It’s a decision I make every day, that I’m not going to smoke or do drugs. It’s good if you decide today. But tomorrow, you need to decide again. And when you’re 14, again. And when you’re 24 like me, you will still be deciding every day that you want to make healthy choices.”
As you can maybe tell, I’m more of a fan of integrating drug awareness into the year, rather than focusing on it for a week. I feel like one week every October is not enough time to teach my students how to make healthy choices. It’s the same with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. My students will not develop an appreciation for Civil Rights or a respect for people of all origins if we only talk about it for a week in January.
Yeah, this week will be fun. Will my students get much out of it? I hope so, but it’s up to me to help them make healthy choices all year long, not just during Red Ribbon Week.
