7th Grade: Amazing Alternatives

copyright Hazelden Foundation

Amazing Alternatives is an alcohol prevention program for students in the 7th grade. The curriculum is implemented in eight 45-minute long classroom sessions that address topics such as:

• Adolescents Growing Up and Changing
  
• Understanding Facts about Adolescent Alcohol Use
• Identifying Positive Alternatives to Alcohol Use
• Practicing Effective Ways to Deal with the Influence to Use Alcohol
• Practicing Effective Ways to Resist Pressures to Use Alcohol
• Understanding Methods the Alcohol Industry Uses to Attract Young Drinkers
• Developing Advertising Tactics Promoting Alternatives to Drinking Alcohol
• Establishing Goals of Non-Alcoholic Use

The program consists of peer-led experiential activities, including group discussions, class games, problem solving, and recordings by peers relating real-life alcohol situations and outcomes. Role-playing exercises explore:

• The reasons why young people use alcohol
• The societal perception that most people their age drink
• Intentions not to drink

These activities and role plays are designed to delay the onset of alcohol use among 7th graders by teaching students

• The skills to identify and resist influences to use alcohol
• To diminish the acceptability of alcohol use
• To encourage alcohol-free alternatives

Teachers and counselors: Download details about the sessions and curriculum (link to ProjectNorthlandCurriculum.pdf)