Educator Creates Program to Prevent School Violence:
Early Intervention With Preteens Appears Successful

A University of Cincinnati program designed to keep students safe and healthy is enjoying early success and gearing up to have an even greater impact in the future. Keith King, assistant professor of health promotion at the University of Cincinnati, says there's a new nationwide push to reach "at-risk" children at a much younger age.

"When the field of prevention first began exploring how to modify negative health behaviors, it started out focusing on adults, then moved to college students, and now more recently, has shifted to adolescents. Nevertheless, we're finding even at that age, it's often too late. Their health attitudes are largely formed by the time they get to high school."

Health professionals are focusing new research on children in middle and elementary schools. King is reporting very successful preliminary results from a study of 10-year-olds at a Cincinnati school, who were recruited into a mentoring program that King developed. King and program associate Beth Davis surveyed children in the fourth grade to determine which children were already engaging in risk-taking activities. They were questioned about several health issues including:

whether they had ever taken a weapon to school

whether they had ever tried alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs

if they were involved in any fights over the past year

and if they were failing two or more subjects.

The team found a sizeable percentage of children at the fourth grade level had already tried alcohol, tobacco and in some cases, inhalants. Others exhibited violent behavior. King and his team identified 30 children to recruit for the program and matched each child with an adult mentor -- a member of the community who had undergone training for the program. The child and mentor met at least twice a week over the school year.

"Most programs of this nature involving an adult and child focus on academic achievement, but this program added components to also build self-esteem. We wanted to build the child's level of connectedness to the school and the adult," said King. The researchers also were careful not to make the program look as if it were for troubled kids. By promoting it as something fun and "cool," the program took on an appeal to children who were not found to be at risk.

The program laid the foundation for those connections by having the child and adult mentor share a dialogue journal. "For example the adult might write, 'If you had three wishes, what would they be?' and then the child would take the notebook, write the answers and then write a question for the mentor. In addition to building connections, there was also a goal setting component. Children were taught to identify areas they needed to work on and then set goals accordingly. Our data indicates it was a little program that packed a big punch."

King says the preliminary results show significant gains in confidence and connectedness to the school, as well as a significant decrease in negative behaviors. King added a peer mentoring component to the program for the current school year as the children, now fifth graders, became mentors to a new group of fourth-graders.