The Coalition is in its third year of delivering a Middle School Transition Program to 8th graders in the Birmingham and Bloomfield public schools.

The goals for this 40-minute, interactive program are to:

1. Correct the misperceptions that many 8th grade students carry about drug and alcohol use in high school

2.  Understand the real harmful consequences that go along with drug and alcohol use

3.  Get 8th grade students' questions answered by the real experts, high school students from their feeder school

To achieve our goals, we focus on the truths about drug and alcohol use using a combination of the Coalition's own 2009 8th-12th data (on actual and perceived substance use).  The data shows the students there is a large misperception in actual use vs what's really happening. We also use other data sources to show the dangers and harmful affects of drug and alcohol use. The presentation has an interactive portion with clickers, allowing the students to answer some of the same questions that are in our survey and then see how their answers compare with the actual survey results.

 We also bring a panel of "experts"-- high school students from the feeder schools who talk about and answer pre-written and 'live' questions about the high school experience and transition.  These can be anything that the students are anxious or curious about and always tend to include the social scene, choices, consequences and substance-use.    

Some of our wonderful YAB Teens

This year's participating middle schools include Derby and BCS in Birmingham Public School District and Bloomfield Hills, East Hills and West Hills in Bloomfield Hills Public School District.