Schools

Moorehead Teaches Good Decision-Making

Montville Police Officer Karen Moorehead Brings the DARE Program to Life

In the slim, strong person of Montville Police Officer Karen Moorehead, DARE has come of age.

It’s Moorehead’s third year as the DARE officer, and she has big shoes to fill. According to Dave Rowley, Montville has the distinction of being the first DARE program in Connecticut. The first DARE officer was Trooper Jim Barnes of the Connecticut State Police, who held the position for two years. Officer Dennis Monahan Jr. held the position for 10 years, followed by Rowley, who guided the Montville DARE program for nine years.

The previous DARE officers had a huge effect on the town's kids.

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Now, Moorehead has the job.

 Kids rock

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It’s a big job, too. She teaches in all the elementary schools, acts as the resource officer at the middle school, and makes visits to the high school. In the summer, when school is out, she’s a regular patrol officer.

The job is a good fit for Moorehead.

“I think that kids rock,” she says. “I think it’s a really needed program, too. We have to connect,” she says. “Kids benefit when they connect with police, and police benefit when they connect with kids.”

And Moorehead does connect. We sit at a table at Mohegan Elementary School, during lunchtime, and dozens of kids say hi to Moorehead, wave to her, come up to talk. They’re seeking friendship and approval, it seems, and Moorehead seems eager to comply. She is approachable. She knows the kids’ names. She knows the names of their brothers and sisters, and she remembers facts about their lives.

 A new DARE

DARE has grown up.

These days, Moorehead says, it is about making good choices, good decisions. “And it’s about how to get out of bad situations,” she says.

She teaches a DARE decision-making model that some folks in other professions will recognize: Define the problem, challenge or opportunity. Assess your choices. Respond. Evaluate.

DARE, these days, makes distinctions. The kids in Mrs. Dumond’s fifth-grade class know that it’s OK for a parent to have a drink – but not to have 27 drinks.

The kids know that just saying no to an invitation to bad behavior is one option – but that there are other options: Find an adult, or offer an alternative to the friend who wants to drag you into trouble.

 Good instincts

Teaching DARE ideas seems to come naturally to Moorehead, but her ease and mastery are also results of training.

She attended DARE school for two weeks in Meriden, before she began teaching. At DARE school, she not only learned the principles of the program, but she also learned how to communicate.

For instance, she had to talk someone through the process of tying a shoelace. It’s tough! You have to think the whole process through, and then explain it.

Kids are willing to put up with you if you make a mistake, she says. But other officers are a different story. She laughs easily about the whole experience, but gets serious, too.

“A lot of communicating is instinct,” she says.

The kids respond positively to her, that much is clear. In the classroom, they raise their hands readily to answer questions that are really tough – what do you do if a friend wants you to do something that you know is wrong? Which has more tar, tobacco or marijuana?

Moorehead volunteers information about her own life, her own children. She shares, openly, with the kids, a move that clearly encourages them to share with her. And it works, this two-way DARE street.

Starting early

She starts when the kids are young. In kindergarten and second grade, they learn about guns from Eddie the Eagle, Moorehead says. It seems young, but a 1999 tragedy in which a 9-year-old accidentally shot and killed his 7-year-old brother has shown that it’s probably never too young to teach kids about guns, Moorehead says.

She also teaches them to know their address, to dial 911 and to understand about riding in booster seats.

“They’ll remind mom and dad,” she says, with a knowing smile.

In first grade, she teaches about stranger/danger. She teaches the difference between good touching and bad touching, in general terms.

In third and fourth grades, she addresses whatever the problems of the moment seem to be. This is a lighter program than the other, three-week-long early-grade programs.

In fifth grade, among other topics, the kids learn about drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and situations in which they need to learn to make smart choices.

At the Leonard J. Tyl Middle School, Moorehead acts as a resource officer, talking with troubled kids, hanging out, offering a friendly ear.

It’s a commitment. And Moorehead loves it.

 Teaching critical thinking

Moorehead shows a video on the prevalence of alcohol in American society, and then opens the discussion up to the fifth-graders.

“So what do you think?” she asks.

“I think it’s freaky they would have a beer ad on stuffed animals,” one boy says, referring to a bit in the film that showed a stuffed animal wearing clothing with “Budweiser” emblazoned on it.

Another kid talks about a relative who took a cab home after drinking too much.

Another says it’s OK to drink if you don’t drink too much.

Moorehead responds openly, and asks questions that encourage the kids to think critically about what they’ve seen and what they think. Why would the beer company put its slogan on a stuffed animal? What else could that relative have done, and why was the cab a good solution? How can you be sure you’re making responsible decisions?

Moorehead again uses her own life to illustrate dependence.

“I have one iced tea every day,” she says. “If I don’t have an iced tea, by this time (mid afternoon), I am a cranky, cranky witch. I will have a headache because I don’t have my caffeine. And that’s one iced tea!”

 Instant rapport

She runs a game with the kids, asking them to list facts about tobacco, alcohol and marijuana. She takes some more questions, and fields some more back at the kids. And then she’s off, to another classroom across the hall, another group of kids. Their hellos are audible from across the way.

“She has an instant rapport,” says fifth-grade teacher Liz Dumond. “The kids love her.”

Correction: An earlier version of the story had an incorrect DARE officer lineage.


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