Meteorologist Drew Michaels visits DNE for Red Ribbon Week

Students release 340 red balloons and pledge to be drug free

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

DECATUR - Northside Elementary School students celebrated making healthy choices during last weeks Red Ribbon Week.

This year’s Red Ribbon Week theme was “Careers Are Cool, Drugs Are Not! We Can Be Anything We Want to Be, We’re Drug Free!”

October was also the school’s “Career Month” so the topics were easily tied together, according to elementary school counselor Maolina Yang, who organized the events.

Students in Kindergarten through second grade learned about community helpers and career words. Students in grades 3-6 learned about why people work and built a resume wall. Students and staff also showed support for a drug-free lifestyle by wearing special clothing on different themes throughout the days of the week.

Chief Meteorologist, Drew Michaels, from 40/29 News, was the special guest on Thursday, October 28th. Drew shared about his career as a meteorologist by givinga weather presentation to the student body on Thursday afternoon. He also encouraged students to do the right things by staying in school, listening to teachers, and led students in pledging to be drug free as students released 340 red balloons all at once.

“DNE would like to give a special thank you to our PTO and Decatur State Bank for supplying the balloons, and to our parent volunteers and teachers who stayed after school the night before to fill up all the balloons with helium which were supplied by the PTO,” Yang said.

Each student in grades Pre-K through sixth grade had a balloon and pledged to be drug free. The phrase on the balloons read “Our School is Too Cool To Do Drugs!”

“It is important that students are able to make connections to public figures in our communities to help them understand the purpose of going to school and learning,” Yang said.

School News, Pages 16 on 11/03/2010