Watertown, Tennessee
I am Lindsay Williamson, a prevention coordinator at Drug Free Wilco and right now I’m coming to you from Watertown, Tennessee, which is located outside of Nashville, east of Nashville. But I work with all of Wilson County, is Mount Juliet, Lebanon, and Watertown.
Again, just a little bit east of Nashville, Tennessee. So this week we as our coalition brought out VIVE 18 and brought out specifically Jake White came out to speak to our six high schools that we excuse me six schools that we have here in Wilson County.
We have five high schools here in Wilson County large high schools and then he also spoke to two middle schools this week. His message was amazing. He spoke about prevention but came from the lens of what if you never use and what does life look like for that? What’s the difference between skill sets and short sets? Nope, that’s not it. Shortcuts, excuse me.
So he talks a little bit about skill sets and shortcuts and talked about how when you develop something, so you come into life and you start life by chance, who your parents are, where you were born. What is the choices really that makes such a big difference to your life and where your life is going ahead and you have the choice actually to develop skill sets. It will lead you to success. It’ll lead you to the things that you want to be, whether it’s money or whether you want to have a family, you want to have a house, whether you want to go to college or you want to go to a trade school, any of those things that skill sets are what take you there and the choice to make good choices, healthy choices, low risk choices takes you in that direction. Shortcuts can happen too though.
Shortcuts are the things that he talked to Jake talk to our kids about, sometimes problems come up in life. And so Jake really talked to all of our students about the difference between setting yourself up for success by making choices that are pushing us towards those skill sets instead of making the choice to have shortcuts. Jake also, it was so awesome because he talked even about how do we do this? What does this look like, talked about his life experience, about setting things up and how do I invite other people around me? Because they’re there.
We think so many times. I know I have thought that other people around me do exactly what I do. Are they all drink? Are they’re all vaping? And Jake helped kind of bring to the surface those social norms that no they don’t. Not everybody drinks. Not everybody in that. Actually a big majority don’t. So how do we find those people that are just like us, that don’t want to get involved in vaping or don’t want to use drugs or even people that maybe are using and say, I want to see what it’s like to step out of that.
And Jake helped walk all of these high schoolers, all of these youth into what that could look like for their lives. It was amazing. The feedback from not only the teachers, the principals, but also the kids in general. I wish you could have seen the kids that rushed Jake afterwards. Jake was signed in t-shirts for autographs. People that came up and shared personal stories. Again, these are youth, youth on their own. They weren’t invited up to come and share with Jake, they wanted to because Jake is a safe person and after hearing him speak you trust him. You trust what he’s saying and you trust that he has best intentions because his amount of care for people just comes through his message.
So these youth are eager now. Like every single school we went to, we had at least five or six people that came up afterwards. That’s five or six and we know that that can multiply. So just so amazed at what’s happened. He also had a chance to work with our leadership group. So we have a youth prevention coalition. so Jake spent an afternoon about two hours of talk with that youth coalition as well from the different schools about how do we recruit? What does it look like? How do we get more people involved? How do we get them to want to come to some of these things? And he led us through activities that we can use and take today.
We can go and do this today and get people, other people involved. And so it was worth every second, every moment. Every single person I worked with at Vive18 was just so incredible about helping us organize this. Schools, it can be hard to work with schools because they’ve got a lot going on. It’s end of the year here for us in Tennessee. And so we’ve got graduations, we’ve got end of year activities happening, we’ve got end of year testing going on.
Jake and the team were so patient with us as we worked with the schools and the scheduling to make this happen. It was an incredible experience. I highly, highly recommend VIVE18 to come to speak to your youth, to your community, because it gets you on fire about prevention and how to live a life that is successful and healthy.
Lebanon, Tennessee
My name is Tracy Sparkman. I’m the principal at Walter J. Baird Middle School in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Today we sponsored Vive 18 and they presented to our all of our sixth and seventh graders in the gym today. Our students absolutely loved it. It was highly engaging and I love the way that the presenters did the angle or used the angle of you need to develop a skill set to handle stress better in life instead of drugs and alcohol.
Vive 18 is different because it has a clear message, highly engaging with the students and the students came away definitely knowing what the message was as far as making sure that when they are handling stress that they are developing skills in life to cope with those.
Mount Juliet, Tennessee
“I’m Ryan Hill, I’m the principal at Mount Juliet High School in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, and we’re right outside Nashville, Tennessee.
We had Jake from Vive18 give us a presentation to our 10th grade students. We had about 400 in the theater. The presentation was super engaging. The students learned a lot. There were several that came up just a second ago and thanked Jake for his presentation. There was games that were involved. There were several different things. It wasn’t just to sit and get. It was very interactive and the students enjoyed it and I enjoyed getting to see the statistics and learn.
I learned something from the presentation today. not everybody uses drugs or alcohol or any of the other things you mentioned that there’s just because you may feel like you’re the only one that doesn’t. There’s other people out there that are like you and this is a great program and the Youth Prevention Coalition that we have here at school hopefully can get more involved with this. It’s just a great thing overall. so in Wilson County, sorry, the district we’re in, they have Drug Free Wilco where they have a club at each school called the Youth Prevention Coalition that’s who organized this event. we want to thank them for having Vive 18 and Jake come out today.
They’re going around to all the high schools and middle schools giving this presentation and just want to thank them for doing it. A lot of thank yous, like they were walking straight up to you and thanking you for doing the presentation. One girl, think, I didn’t get to hear all of it, she was telling me little bit about her story with her uncle that just went through an overdose and that personal connection she had to it. A couple of them wanted your picture because you’re a famous guy. They wanted to get a picture for that, but there’s a lot of thank yous and how could they get more involved?
I would recommend Vive 18 to high schools especially, but I feel like it’s relevant in middle schools as well because that’s when a lot of kids first face that peer pressure to try something. We just had our 10th graders in here today, but it’s something that our whole student body could have benefited from. But today it just worked out with our 10th graders, but I would highly recommend it to any school that hears about this or wants to do it, definitely recommend.
Kingsport, Tennessee
Corey Gardenhour, Principal at Robinson Middle School in Kingsport, Tennessee shares about the Vive18 prevention program. Speaker Jake White delivered three student assemblies along with two parent and community member presentations on substance use and abuse. These events paired well with the month of October since it’s Red Ribbon Week, a national holiday for drug and alcohol awareness.
The community rallied around this platform so students can enjoy positive, safe events without alcohol, vaping or other drugs. The school created a Vive18 club and has already gained support from PTA, United Way and the Chamber of Commerce. Jake will stay connected to students and faculty for a full year to help them build a sustainable peer-led prevention program that shows students they can fit in, make friends, have fun and feel good without using substances. Gardenhour says “this is a great countermeasure to build community for our school.” He knows that school test scores, attendance and culture are important and this program is a way to support that. It’s a way to prioritize their health and stay away from drugs and alcohol or other paths they could take. They already have a group of students who are excited to lead and the first event planned!
Bristol, Tennessee
Drug prevention speaker Jake White spoke to middle school students in Bristol Tennessee during October, the month of Red Ribbon Week. His program Vive18 showed students they can have fun, feel good and deal with life’s challenges without using drugs, alcohol or vaping products. It was very engaging with games, drumming, interaction and the theme of developing “skillsets” instead of using “shortcuts” like alcohol or other drugs. They are implementing the full Vive18 program to start a club that will allow students to host positive, safe, drug-free events for their peers as well. Jake White has been speaking to students in middle school, high school, and college about drug prevention and making good choices since 2017. The United Way was able to sponsor the entire program to bring him to the community and speak with many schools in the area, and even do a parent presentation on how to prevent drug use in their homes.
