Photographs of the Model Student Assistance Program at the Jennings McCall Center.

The teachers present all agreed it was a tremendous success!

This program is designed to train school personnel to work as a team to identify those students in their care that they believe are "at risk." An at risk situation might be one, or more, of the following: chemical dependency, depression, or suicidal thoughts and tendencies.

The Model Student Assistance Program was developed in 1984 in Pennsylvania and is being successfully used by more than two dozen Grand Jurisdictions in the United States. The program currently being used in Oregon, which is adapted from the highly acclaimed National Model Student Assistance Program, seeks to enhance educators' skills in perceiving at risk situations, and helps them find and link existing human resources within their schools and community. The objective is early and effective intervention with those students who demonstrate patterns of behavior that could threaten their success in school.

The family of Freemasonry has been actively involved in the funding of the Model Student Assistance team training since the founding of the National Masonic Foundation for Children in 1985. Oregon has plans to hold two training sessions in 2005. Fifty to 60 teachers will be trained in each of these three-day sessions.

This valuable training is designed for school personnel, kindergarten through 12th grade. Core teams of from five to seven educators (administrators, teachers, school nurses, guidance counselors, etc.) learn how to identify and intervene in order to help those children at risk. The intensive training involves practice sessions designed to simulate real events. Comprehensive programming covers prevention, identification and assessment, intervention, treatment, and aftercare.

The student assistance program is designed to --