Taking it To Heart

Hello family and friends. Here is a little sample of our Forward Step: Newsletter that just came out! Be sure to check out the rest. The link is at the bottom of this entry.

Marta Crosgrove teaches at a Secondary Community Day School (CDS) site in the Los Angeles Unified School District. CDS provides classroom programs for high-risk students who are not succeeding in a traditional school setting.

Currently, I teach in a drug treatment facility for teenagers. I’ve been using the COMPASS curriculum there for two and a half years. In the beginning the kids were resistant, as they are with most new things, but after a while I began to see them coming together more as a group. They seemed to bond a bit more and focus better in class. Their grades went up and they began to care about things outside of themselves.

            If the kids are open to it, the COMPASS lessons can make a huge difference. Some of them really take it to heart. One student in particular excelled with the program. He came to me at age 15 with a long history of gang and drug involvement. He had a new baby across town and devil horns tattooed on his head. Soon after we started COMPASS, I noticed that he began using the words and phrases we learned in the COMPASS classes during other times of the day as well. After discussing communication skills, he shared with me that he used that knowledge to improve his relationship with his mother. He said that before they mostly yelled at each other, but now he had learned to not use attacking words and things were going better. He also used the goal-setting lessons to keep himself on track when he felt like relapsing. He was able to remain clean and eventually graduate from drug court, allowing him to move on to a new school and a new life.

(Continued at Forward Step: Newsletter)