News
SADD founder to speak at Darlington
Jan 24, 2008 12:00 AM
By Tannika King - Faculty
Bob Anastas, founder and former executive director of Students Against Driving Drunk, will speak at Darlington School’s Huffman Center Wednesday, March 5 at 11 a.m. All faculty and students in grades 6-12 will attend his lecture. Parents are also invited.
Over the past two decades, Anastas has risen to national prominence as a speaker, educator and author. Today, through his program, “Check In To A Winning Life,” he brings to both parents and students a timely, motivational message on how young people can develop responsible attitudes and make smart choices about the many challenges they face.
A former college All-American football and hockey player, Teacher of the Year, and coach, Anastas faced a tragedy in the summer of 1981 that profoundly changed the course of his life. Within four days, two star athletes on his high school hockey team were killed in separate drunk driving crashes. Their deaths prompted Anastas to start a new health program for sophomores at the Massachusetts school where he taught.
After only one week into the course, he recognized that this typical approach – reciting powerful statistics regarding the consequences of underage drinking and driving – was not getting through. The students already knew the facts, but were still making illegal and risky choices and, in some cases, they were dying. Out of frustration, Anastas turned to the students themselves for help. Together, they began to tackle the problem.
“We began to see the problem as a box in which students are trapped,” he explained. “One wall of the box is made up of the kids’ desire to preserve their parents’ perfect image of them. The second wall is created by peer pressure – the pressure to go along with what the students perceive as socially acceptable, high-risk behavior. The third wall is comprised of simple innocence and naiveté. Despite the statistics, kids don’t fully comprehend their own morality. And the final wall is built by a lack of communication between children and parents.”
From this concept was born SADD, a program which engages students and parents in a joint commitment to help each other, to call on one another, to break down the walls of “the box.” Today, recognizing that students face many other challenges and decisions beyond those about underage drinking and drunk driving, Anastas has initiated a new and separate program, an evolution of his core message, expanded to address the broader subject of responsible decision-making.
“Drinking illegally and driving drunk are just two forms of high-risk behavior that students exhibit – two symptoms of a deeper cause,” said Anastas. “That cause is rooted in declining life skills of self-discipline, self-esteem, motivation, maturity and leadership.”
The “Check In To A Winning Life” program covers these issues – motivating students, teachers and parents to broaden their understanding of risk-taking behavior and to forcefully address it. Anastas is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, and was the recipient of the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Award and the National Commission Against Drunk Driving Humanitarian Award, among others. A television movie dramatizing his life was broadcast on both CBS and HBO, and he has addressed more than two million students in thousands of high schools and colleges throughout the country.
Over the past two decades, Anastas has risen to national prominence as a speaker, educator and author. Today, through his program, “Check In To A Winning Life,” he brings to both parents and students a timely, motivational message on how young people can develop responsible attitudes and make smart choices about the many challenges they face.
A former college All-American football and hockey player, Teacher of the Year, and coach, Anastas faced a tragedy in the summer of 1981 that profoundly changed the course of his life. Within four days, two star athletes on his high school hockey team were killed in separate drunk driving crashes. Their deaths prompted Anastas to start a new health program for sophomores at the Massachusetts school where he taught.
After only one week into the course, he recognized that this typical approach – reciting powerful statistics regarding the consequences of underage drinking and driving – was not getting through. The students already knew the facts, but were still making illegal and risky choices and, in some cases, they were dying. Out of frustration, Anastas turned to the students themselves for help. Together, they began to tackle the problem.
“We began to see the problem as a box in which students are trapped,” he explained. “One wall of the box is made up of the kids’ desire to preserve their parents’ perfect image of them. The second wall is created by peer pressure – the pressure to go along with what the students perceive as socially acceptable, high-risk behavior. The third wall is comprised of simple innocence and naiveté. Despite the statistics, kids don’t fully comprehend their own morality. And the final wall is built by a lack of communication between children and parents.”
From this concept was born SADD, a program which engages students and parents in a joint commitment to help each other, to call on one another, to break down the walls of “the box.” Today, recognizing that students face many other challenges and decisions beyond those about underage drinking and drunk driving, Anastas has initiated a new and separate program, an evolution of his core message, expanded to address the broader subject of responsible decision-making.
“Drinking illegally and driving drunk are just two forms of high-risk behavior that students exhibit – two symptoms of a deeper cause,” said Anastas. “That cause is rooted in declining life skills of self-discipline, self-esteem, motivation, maturity and leadership.”
The “Check In To A Winning Life” program covers these issues – motivating students, teachers and parents to broaden their understanding of risk-taking behavior and to forcefully address it. Anastas is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, and was the recipient of the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Award and the National Commission Against Drunk Driving Humanitarian Award, among others. A television movie dramatizing his life was broadcast on both CBS and HBO, and he has addressed more than two million students in thousands of high schools and colleges throughout the country.
