 Aspirations, Achievement, Teamwork, Discipline, Physical Fitness, Overcoming Obstacles, Support, Respect. These are just some of the things people think of when they think about the history and excitement of the Olympic Games. For educators, these concepts also have important meaning in the work to help students grow and achieve in safe, healthy, and drug-free ways. When I grow up, I want to become a biologist and do research. When I grow up, I want to be a mechanic and fix cars. I like to be a lawyer. When I grow up, I want to be a pilot and fly a plane all around the world. All children have dreams and potential, but there are factors which place them at risk of engaging in harmful behaviors such as violence and the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. With help, children will grow up to live their dreams, guided through challenging circumstances by an inner strength or resiliency fostered by their families, communities, and schools. Resiliency is the ability to adapt to change and deal with difficult situations in positive ways. Resilient youth are more likely to resist drug use, violence, and other harmful behaviors. Olympic spirit building resiliency in youth is a teaching resource. It is designed to provide examples of how teachers can foster resiliency in their students by building competencies. This curriculum supplement uses exciting themes from the Olympic Games to enhance and extend drug and violence prevention efforts across disciplines and into the community. The following scenes show teachers applying these lessons in their classrooms. Doris Glover's third-grade students are using problem-solving skills in an interesting cross-disciplinary way to determine how they can be involved in the Olympic torch relay. Resilient young people use critical thinking skills and seek alternate solutions to problems. And in talking about the Olympics, as I said, Mr. Lee, our PE teacher, has gone out with you and measured off the distance out there for us all to run a mile. He mentioned to you about the torch, right, the Olympic torch, and how and they bring it over. The torch is carried to the next city where the Olympics is going to be. And where is the Olympics going to be in the summer of 96? Atlanta. And Atlanta, Georgia, isn't it? If we were going to help carry that Olympic torch all the way to Atlanta, Georgia, we would have to find out how far we would have to go. We would have to measure off the distance and we could figure out how long it would take us as a group to collectively get that torch from this area to Atlanta. What all are we going to need to figure out to find out how long it would take us? Try to find out how far it would be by using a map or an atlas and see how many of us it would take to get there. So you want to do that this afternoon? Yes! We'll find out how long it's going to take us. The competencies that we were trying to focus on with the children had to do of course with the cognitive competencies in terms of the problem solving. We were working on a problem together and that brought in the social competency in terms of working together in a group to solve a problem. The math lesson that I taught today had to do with geography also. We even got the PE teacher involved in it to where he was working with the kids outside and it just kind of snowballed. Bill Lee, the physical education teacher, is building upon the problem solving lesson the students began in their classroom. He focuses on strengthening the students' resiliency by enhancing their physical competence. I want to congratulate you. You've been selected Mrs. Glover's class and you're going to run to Atlanta. Physical competence includes physical fitness, good nutrition and knowledge of the consequences of harmful behaviors. If we run around the field, how will we know how far we ran? I see the Olympic spirit building resiliency as having a lot of opportunities to build physical competencies in our young people and the importance of a healthy body and a healthy lifestyle, eating the right foods and getting involved in exercise as an important way to be active out of school and to promote activities that can be long lasting life activities that they can get involved in. Resilient young people communicate effectively and engage in pro-social behaviors. They are caring and compassionate. One, two, three. Mary Cibella focuses on pro-social behavior in this lesson for her first grade students. I'm going to need your help with Jack and Jill today. One day Jack and Jill were outside on the playground and a little girl got into an argument with Jack and Jill. Jill decided the best way to solve the problem was to punch the little girl. Jack decided that the best way to solve the problem was to use words and talk out the problem. Who acted like a winner? Stephanie? I think Jack acted like a winner. Why do you think Jack was a winner? Because he talked with the words. That's right. A winner solves a problem not with violence but with words. Would you come on up and put the gold medal on Jack? In my lesson a lot of the students generated positive ways that they could interact with one another using words instead of violence. They demonstrated examples of caring and helping one another. This is of course always a very relevant message and these characteristics are seen in the resilient child. The Olympic theme also enables teachers to emphasize the importance of teamwork and the social skills necessary to achieve it. Teamwork is one of the keys to being successful. The group that I trained with encouraged me just yesterday in practice. 16 guys actually clapping their hands, rooting me on to finish my workout. It was very difficult for me. You try to do your part, I try to do my part and we come together and we'll be very successful. So teamwork and camaraderie is one of the keys to being successful. Resilient youth also demonstrate a sense of civic competence which is the ability to serve as responsible contributing members of society. Civic competence can be strengthened through volunteer service in the community such as helping build low cost housing or beautifying a neighborhood park with a mural as well as through programs at school such as food drives or older students tutoring younger students. They are getting more of a sense of community spirit by contributing to their community. When there's a bond between the students in the community when that is strong then the students are more likely to adhere to the rules of that community and they have a stronger resistance or resilience to say no to alcohol and drugs. Community service efforts not only build civic competence but can help promote teamwork, cooperation, communication and problem solving skills. Civic competence also involves developing an appreciation for unique personal and cultural differences. The Olympic athletes assembled from hundreds of nations provide an inspiring example for helping students appreciate common interests and unique differences. Other characteristics of resilient youth are the belief in a bright future, the ability to make plans and work toward goals. The individuals who are Olympic athletes have been planning and training for long, long, long years, set a goal and then accomplished it. And I want my kids to realize that they have the innate capability to do exactly the same thing. That they can set dreams for themselves, that they can achieve those dreams through hard work and that they can reach out to other people for support in attaining those dreams that they've set for themselves. In this lesson, middle school teachers Linda McFadden and Barbara Lewis use an athlete's road to the Olympic Games as an example for their students. They ask each student to focus on steps they can begin taking today to work toward their goals. Having an Olympic spirit, as we said earlier, is not just about winning. When you see a person that's winning the Games, that person has gone a long way. That person has set goals. We were taking a concept, achieving goals, but we were trying to make sure that those kids learned to achieve goals in more than one different way. Okay, now you have your goal in mind and you've done some artwork to go along with that and you've helped one another come up some steps that you'll need to take in order to achieve your goal. What I need for you to do now is to start on the mapping part of your assignment. You're going to draw a map showing where you're beginning and where you eventually want to end up and the steps you'll need to take along the way in order to get there. Our kids have been drilled on the problems alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs might have on their life. I think when you ask them as our lesson plans ask us to do, to take their own personal goal and to think about the steps they need to take and then we will fill in questions. As you're approaching your goal, why would it be a problem if you started taking drugs, you know? And then it's just a kind of, there's a little light bulb that goes off in their head and they start to see that it applies to them and it applies to me too. Students who are able to set goals and work toward achieving them are less likely to become involved with drugs, violence, and other harmful behaviors. Students of all ages can benefit from lessons designed to help them plan and work toward their goals. Do people who are going to win the gold medal just start at the bottom of that triangle and march right straight up to the top? High school teachers Judy Robbins and Judy Thomas use the example of an athlete working toward the goal of competing in the Olympic games to help their students focus on the steps they need to take to reach their personal goals. Now I'm going to make it to college one day. We've got a triangle here and if you look at the top, what does it say at the top? Olympic gold medal. Okay, that's the goal of this person, Olympic gold medal. What we want to think about for just a minute, you know, some of the things that would help an athlete get to that gold medal. Dedication. Dedication. Dedication is trying to get to that gold medal. What should the person do wrong? To be drug free. Yeah, to be drug free. That's really important. I'm putting family support. That's really interesting. What we're going to do is ask you to draw your own triangle. Draw a triangle with your goal and see if we can duplicate personally what it is we've done for the Olympic athletes here. I think the Olympic spirit will affect all our students, athletes and non-athletes because they will see a person reaching a goal. That will carry over to anything we do whether it's to be an airline pilot or what other goal the young people set for themselves in life. We all do not aspire to be in the Olympics. The lessons of the Olympic spirit provide many opportunities to infuse drug and violence prevention into all curriculum areas, as well as engage students, school personnel and parents in school-wide activities on the topic. Our job then is to help kids make connections between and among the subject matters. And interdisciplinary themes like drug prevention, like wellness, like developing a healthy lifestyle, like focusing on the future, like preparing as the Olympic athletes are doing for an upcoming challenge is something that fits in with all the subject areas. Teachers will be able to dovetail activities in science and social studies computers. And our library of physical education and art and music programs that relate directly to this concept and idea of resilience. With all of us working together it will also bring about a community effort because our PTA is very, very supportive of the kinds of things we attempt to do here. And we will end up having activities in the community to support the things that are going on in school. We know kids learn best when they're immersed in an environment. And we know that they also learn best when we give them metaphors. Wouldn't it be neat if this year we use the school-wide theme of the Olympics to govern a lot of the things that we do? I'm thinking about the school-wide questions that we do for writing practice, the way we decorate our hallways, the competitions we have between teams for good attendance could have an Olympic spirit theme attached to them. And I would like to see gold for the gold banners every place throughout our schools. It would be a great thing for us.