TEACHERS SAY DRUG PROGRAM MAKING BIG IMPACT

The classroom was silent.

There was no whispering or sound of rustling paper to interrupt the
students in the Port Charlotte Middle School science class as they watched
the television in front of them, listening as the family of a child their
age talked about their son's death from drugs.

One eighth-grade girl rubbed her eyes, red-rimmed with tears, as the class
listened to an actual 9-1-1 call, hearing the boy's desperate mother and
brother try to revive him.

It wasn't heroin, cocaine or Ecstasy that killed the boy, either. It was a
bottle of air freshener he had inhaled.

The scene was just one part of a Charlotte County Sheriff's Office drug
awareness presentation teacher Jodi Booher's six science classes sat in on
Thursday, learning how drugs had changed the lives of real families.

It's a program that Dale Phillips, a community relations coordinator for
the Sheriff's office typically presents to larger groups of students in
gymnasiums.

But after she presented her program to the faculty of Port Charlotte Middle
School on a teacher inservice day, a few teachers approached her, asking if
she could bring the program to individual classes.

"It was moving," Booher said of the video Phillips shows as part of the
program. The video shows actual teenagers meeting people whose children
have died, a woman who was raped while on Ecstasy, a man who is now
mentally and physically disabled after an overdose of the drug GHB and
babies born addicted to drugs.

Booher said it made many of the teachers cry when they watched it,
including herself.

A state survey released last year showed that middle and high school
students in Charlotte County were abusing more illegal drugs and alcohol
than in any other county in Florida.

But educators and community groups have been working to try to combat that
with programs like Phillips'.

"This is the first time we've tried this in this sort of setting," Phillips
said. "The teachers took the initiative."

Janet Fisher, who teaches math to gifted students, wanted her class to see
it because she was worried a few of them were close to the borderline of
thinking drugs might be cool. She said as eighth-graders, her students are
getting to an age where they hang out with high-school age teens and want
to try and emulate them.

The older teens may not actually do drugs, but if the middle school
students think they do, Fisher said they may start thinking it's cool to do
drugs as well.

"They're gifted; if they want something, they have the resources and the
know-how to get it," she said. "I don't want to see them blow that."

But Fisher said she thinks Phillips made an impact in her class. Phillips
presented her program to Fisher's students earlier in the week.

"It's kind of like a reality show," Fisher said of Phillips' program. "The
kids were glued to it. I think they learned a lot."

Part of the reason Phillips said she thinks the program is having an impact
in the classroom is because she can stop the video and answer questions
when students have them, something that is harder to do with a big group.

After watching the segment of inhalant abuse -- or huffing -- Phillips
stopped the tape.

In an earlier class, she had asked students to raise their hands if they'd
ever tried huffing. She said about half the students raised their hands.
She posed the same question to the class before her, asking their teacher
and other adults in the room to look away so they could answer privately.

"What type of game is it like playing?" she asked.

One girl looked up and answered her.

"Russian Roulette."