The L.E.A.D., or Law Enforcement Against Drugs and Violence program, began for 43 students in the fourth grade at Toll Gate Grammar School last month.
L.E.A.D. is a nationwide nonprofit that works with communities to help students understand the dangers of drugs and violence.
Pennington Borough Police Department officer Dan D’Ascoli has been trained by L.E.A.D. to teach the program’s proven effective curriculum. And now, he’s educating the fourth graders in Pennington about the dangers of drugs and violence as well as how to build skills surrounding effective communication, conflict resolution and social and emotional competency, for instance.
“L.E.A.D.’s curriculum is developed in a way to teach children the social and emotional skills that today’s youth needs,” D’Ascoli said in a media release. “The fourth graders that I’m instructing are learning strategies that’ll help them to build character and avoid succumbing to peer pressure, for instance.”
D’Ascoli said that interacting with kids on a more personal level is helping him to connect with other members of the Pennington community.
He believes that the L.E.A.D. program will help to form a stronger bond between the police officers at Pennington Borough Police Department and people in the town.
“The motto that we stand by at Pennington Borough Police Department is ‘personalized police service,’ and L.E.A.D. has been a great help in allowing us to continue delivering it. As the program goes on, I look forward to seeing how the relationship with our police officers and the people in our community keeps progressing,” D’Ascoli said.
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