keepin’ it REAL Elementary School Curriculum

Keepin it Real

D.A.R.E.’s keepin’ it REAL Elementary School curriculum continues a more than thirty year commitment to providing cutting edge instruction that helps prevent drug use by developing basic, core skills needed for safe and responsible choices…skills that extend well beyond drugs to healthy and mature choices in life.

The curriculum, designed based on the Socio-Emotional Learning Theory (SEL), identifies fundamental, basic skills and developmental processes needed for healthy development including:

  • Self-awareness and management
  • Responsible decision making
  • Understanding others
  • Relationship and communication skills
  • Handling responsibilities and challenges

SEL theory teaches youth to control their impulses and think about risks and consequences resulting in more responsible choices. D.A.R.E. believes that if you can teach youth to make safe and responsible decisions, it will guide them to healthy choices, not only about drugs, but across all parts of their lives. As they grow to be responsible citizens, they will lead healthier and more productive drug-free lives.

The course’s ten lessons are arranged in a scaffolding process, starting with the basics about responsibility and decision making and then building on each other allowing students to develop their own responses to real life situations. The very first lesson starts with responsibility and introduces decision making with subsequent lessons applying these skills in increasing complex ways to drug use and other choices in their lives.