Program Goals/Target Population
Taking Charge of Your Life (TCYL) targets students during their years most at risk—seventh through ninth grade—to prevent the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.
Program Activities
The program is administered through 10 lessons delivered in seventh grade and seven booster lessons in ninth grade. The program highlights the personal, social, and legal risks and consequences involved with using tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. It delivers data from national studies on substance use to dispel the concept that “everybody does it.” Students receive life skills training such as communication, decision-making, assertiveness, and refusal skills. The consequences of drug use and making good choices are reinforced.
Content is based on a series of scenarios of problem situations addressing the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Content is structured to be appropriate for the different ages. In the seventh grade curriculum, alcohol and tobacco are addressed in nine of the lessons; marijuana and other drugs are covered in five and three lessons, respectively. Most of the lessons concentrate on normative beliefs, the consequences of substance use, effective decision-making, and resistance skills. In the ninth grade, most lessons include material on the consequences of substance use and decision-making; alcohol is addressed in five lessons; and all other substances are addressed in three lessons.
All lessons are administered by police officers with Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) training. Teachers schedule time for these lessons to be taught in the classroom during the normal school day.
The program incorporates large and small group discussions, as well as role-playing, and follows a spiral structure that introduces skills and key points that are revisited and practiced in increasingly complex situations. This allows students to build on their knowledge and learn how to incorporate it into real-world decision-making and refusal techniques. Homework provides further practice and helps keep parents informed.
Program Theory
This redesigned program, an updated version of DARE, has an active or constructivist learning approach. This approach encourages students to understand their experiences, ideas, and values about the consequences of substance abuse by relating them to their existing beliefs. Learning occurs through interactions with one another and the instructor, using in-depth deliberations, authentic problem-solving, and realistic role-playing.
Additional Information: Negative Program Effects
An outcome evaluation (described below in Evaluation Methodology and Outcomes) looked at the effects of TCYL in six major metropolitan areas, including Detroit, Michigan; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Newark, New Jersey; New Orleans, Louisiana.; and St. Louis, Missouri. The results showed that students who participated in TCYL had worse outcomes than control group participants who did not receive the program. Students who participated in the program reported significantly more alcohol use, binge drinking, and cigarette use than students who did not participate in the program.
