Posted 1:46 am Friday, January 29, 2010
Tyler ISD Honors Participants In Anti-Gang Program
By BETTY WATERS
Staff Writer
Dogan Middle School on Thursday honored the first group of Tyler Independent School District students who successfully completed a program aimed at preventing gangs and making youngsters better citizens.
Staff Writer
Dogan Middle School on Thursday honored the first group of Tyler Independent School District students who successfully completed a program aimed at preventing gangs and making youngsters better citizens.
"It was fun. It taught me not to get in gangs and not to hang around with the wrong people," said Juan Qurioga, 11.
His mother, Luz Qurioga, said she was proud of her son for completing the program. In the classes, he learned about malicious gangs in the world, she added, saying she is glad the school educates students about gang activity.
Certificates were awarded during a graduation ceremony for 89 Dogan students who successfully finished G.R.E.A.T., an acronym for Gang Resistance Education and Training.
About a dozen were on hand for the ceremony. Parents and other family members applauded as the certificates were presented to each graduate and some snapped pictures.
Tyler ISD Officer Tito Castillo, instructor for the G.R.E.A.T. classes at Dogan, presented certificates to the first graduates and gave an overview of the program.
G.R.E.A.T. was started a few years ago by the Phoenix Police Department in Arizona and spread nationwide with grant funding from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Tyler ISD's police department began the program locally last September at Dogan.
Dogan Principal Onella Brown opted to implement the program with half of the school's sixth graders for the fall semester. The other half will participate in the program in the spring semester.
The G.R.E.A.T. national program uses the grants to provide materials and student handbooks to districts free of charge. That allows school districts -- for minimal cost -- to operate the program, said Rex Brown, Tyler ISD chief of police.
The district sent an officer to 80 hours of training for teaching G.R.E.A.T.
"The program is designed to equip our youth with knowledge about preventing gangs and violence within their community and helping them become better citizens and enabling them to make better choices," Brown said.
Dogan students whose parents consent for them to participate in the program attend the G.R.E.A.T. class during an enrichment period during the regular school day.
"G.R.E.A.T. is an excellent program that allows the district to take a proactive approach to helping our students resist gang involvement and violence so that they can achieve an excellent education in Tyler ISD," Brown said.
The G.R.E.A.T. program for middle schools has a 13-week curriculum, and each lesson covers a different topic to provide students skills to help them avoid using gang-associated behavior and violence.
Lessons consist of a 45-minute presentation and all classes are interactive between the instructor and students, Brown said.
The lessons range from being a good community member to dealing with peers and talking about conflict resolution. "It's a gamut of everything a young person needs to succeed in life and not go down the wrong path," Brown said.
For example, Lesson Five is titled "Decisions, Decisions, Decisions" and focuses on making the right choices. The G.R.E.A.T. program teaches students to think about a problem, review all the options and consider the positive and negative outcomes.
The G.R.E.A.T. program has four regional training centers for sworn law enforcement officers to prepare teaching the curriculum in elementary and middle schools.
Brown voiced hope that the program will expand to other Tyler ISD schools in the future.
The G.R.E.A.T. program is being used in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.
According to information from the G.R.E.A.T. program, educators and law enforcement unite in the program to provide children with skills to combat stresses that set the stage for gang involvement and provides them accurate knowledge about gang in-volvement as well as skills to resolve conflicts peacefully and helps them understand the need to set realistic goals.
