NEW DRUG EDUCATION PROGRAM APPEALS TO OLDER KIDS

Music blares out of Darlynn Bailey's fourth-period health class. Her
students are screaming, dancing and jumping on tables.

Bailey? She watches as a police officer urges these 11th-graders to
get wilder and louder.

There is a lesson in this. Really.

"One of the things is finding out who you are and not worry about what
people think of you," said Officer S.T. Riley.

Riley's Scope LifeRide is a new program created by the Kirkland Police
Department and a Chicago motivational speaker to address teen angst
and drug abuse through video clips and music.

It's MTV meets D.A.R.E.

At a time when the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program
is coming under fire for questionable effectiveness, Kirkland's Scope
LifeRide is gaining nationwide attention. The Des Moines and Aberdeen
police departments now use it as well.

Other cities, including Chicago, are looking at the 12-course
program.

On the Eastside, the program is taught in Lake Washington and Juanita
high schools at least once a week. On a recent afternoon, students at
Lake Washington High School strolled into Bailey's class to music
blasting from the speakers.

"Life can be like a roller coaster," Riley told the 29 students. "You
have your ups and your downs. I'm going to challenge you to take that
roller-coaster ride."

An emotional ride is what they then got in the 55-minute presentation.
Some laughed. Some cried. A lot sweated.

Riley played a high-spirited game of "Name That Tune" as part of a
team-building exercise. He showed clips of domestic violence that made
some cover their eyes. Some cringed hearing 911 calls from people who
later were killed.

The police officer brought tears when he turned off the lights and
turned on soft music to get the young people to visualize poignant
moments in their lives.

"It was cool," 16-year-old Melissa Palmer said afterward. "He's not
talking to us but interacting with us. We usually get lectures on
drugs and alcohol, and no one wants to listen to that."

Not preaching is the program's tenet. It was a lesson Riley learned
when he started Scope - short for Schools & Cops Opting for Positive
Education - three years ago. He created a curriculum similar to
D.A.R.E.'s and found students lost interest.

"It was going in one ear and out the other," he recalled.

Enter motivational speaker Eddie Slowikowski. "I saw this guy speak at
a national conference in St. Louis, and I saw him make 300 police
officers dancing on tables, and I was like, `Oh my gosh, if he can do
this, think what he can do with the kids,' " Riley said.

Slowikowski, who runs a human-resource consulting firm in Chicago,
introduced his high-energy LifeRide program, which Riley combined with
his Scope curriculum. "As a speaker, you better get them into the palm
of your hands," Slowikowski said. "That way you can move them to where
you want to take them."

He showed Riley how to use lighting, music and rhetoric to set the
tone and get the message across.

Surveys indicated students wanted more of the program, Riley said.
Attendance also went up on the days Scope LifeRide is taught.

The program was never meant to compete with D.A.R.E., which targets
middle-school students. Scope LifeRide instead focuses on getting
high-school students to talk about dealing with issues such as date
rape, drunken driving and goal setting.

But similar to criticism of D.A.R.E., the concern is whether students
retain the knowledge or the message after the program ends.

Riley and other Scope LifeRide supporters contend retention is greater
because his audience is older. Teachers also say Scope's presentation
is more flexible and spontaneous than D.A.R.E.'s.

Open communication with students is a priority for Riley, who wanted a
better relationships with the teens. Riley and other officers in
schools use Scope LifeRide as an icebreaker.

And Riley talks about his run-in with the law as a teen. The idea is
to show that a police officer is just a human being who happens to
wear a badge, he said.

He jumps on the table to lead the students in a rendition of the song
"YMCA."

"How many programs do you know," he says, "that can get students up in
front of the class and dance?"

Checked-by: Patrick Henry