Ventura School Places Priority on Self-Esteem : Education: The classroom program is aimed at helping the elementary students reject drugs, alcohol, smoking and gangs.

Ventura’s Mound Elementary School is feeling good about feeling good these days.

Next month, teams of parents will take to the classrooms to begin giving students weekly self-esteem lessons in a program designed to follow them through the elementary grades.

School officials and parents hope that by bolstering self-esteem, the students will be better equipped to say no to drugs, alcohol, smoking and even gangs.

They also hope that if children feel better about themselves they will do better academically and get into fewer scrapes on the playground.

“Kids are having more home problems and socialization problems than ever before,” said Mound Principal Beverly McCaslin. “The parents are asking for help. The kids are asking for help. We see a need (for the program) and we want to jump right on it.”

It’s not that Mound’s students suffer abnormally from low self-esteem. In fact, the school’s test scores are among the best in the district. In McCaslin’s view, the lessons provide “lifelong skills” that would benefit any child.

If that sounds serious, it’s meant to be. Forget all the New Age hubbub associated with the now-defunct California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, the group immortalized in Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” cartoons.

Educators such as McCaslin view self-esteem as a sort of inner fitness that will help prepare children for the world they will face as adults.

Mound is believed to be the first school in Ventura County to implement Project Self-Esteem, a classroom program developed 15 years ago by two former Newport Beach teachers.

The program is now used in more than 200 schools in Orange County, where education officials say it is partly responsible for a reduction in drug use.

The program costs little because it is taught by volunteer parents who follow lesson plans laid out in a $40 syllabus. The lessons, usually taught once a week, last 30 to 40 minutes. Twelve different lessons for each grade level are provided.

The sessions cover everything from realizing one’s uniqueness to getting in touch with feelings and learning how to communicate them. The lessons include songs, games, role playing and interaction with a teddy bear puppet named Harmony.

For instance, children might form a circle and play the rumor game as a way of learning how whispered gossip becomes distorted and hurtful. They play-act situations that they might encounter, such as what to do if a friend offers them drugs. Or they learn how to say no without caving in to peer pressure when friends dare them to bike down a dangerous incline or want to borrow something they don’t want to lend.

Students are taught to use the “broken record” approach when it comes to saying no--”Sorry, I never lend my bike; I know you’ll be careful, but I never lend my bike.”

They learn how to channel their feelings. Instead of erupting on the playground over some infraction, children are taught to put their feelings into words: “I feel hurt when you call me names. Don’t do that.”

As the children progress through the lessons, their parents are provided with home activities and discussions to reinforce the messages.

Peggy Bielen, founder of the nonprofit program, believes that parents will benefit from it as much as children.

“Three out of five people don’t like themselves,” she said, citing the book “Self-Esteem--The New Reformation,” by Robert Schuller, who commissioned a Gallup Poll on self-esteem. Parents, she said, tend to raise their children the way they were raised.

“Shame and blame--that’s how we were parented,” she said. It takes a constant effort, she said, to break the cycle.

Not all parents agree with Bielen’s philosophy. In 1985, a group of parents sued the Capistrano Unified School District in Orange County, saying Project Self-Esteem was a form of group therapy that violated religious and privacy rights.

They alleged that volunteer parents teaching the lessons lacked credentials and proper training to provide what they felt was psychological treatment and counseling.

They also complained that one lesson called for the instructor to read a passage from the manual to hypnotize students who were then asked to discuss their personal beliefs concerning family, morality and religion.

The activity was a relaxation exercise calling for students to close their eyes while the instructor counted backward. It was dropped from the manual, and the lawsuit was dismissed in 1986.

“This is not teaching psychotherapy,” Bielen said. “They (volunteers) have a script and they stick closely to it.”

At Mound, about 250 parents showed up at a meeting this month to find out more about Project Self-Esteem. The program received a warm reception, and 25 parents signed up to be volunteer instructors. They underwent a training session last week.

“The curriculum teaches real specific skills,” said Debbie Erickson, school psychologist for the Ventura Unified School District.

“We definitely don’t want there to be a perception that therapy is going on,” she said. A teacher will be present in the classroom at all times, and parents may exclude their children from the lessons.

Erickson said children with low self-esteem are apt to be aggressive on the playground, lack social skills, perform poorly academically or appear depressed. But, she said, some children have problems because they are high achievers and are hard on themselves.

She said data shows that children who feel good about themselves feel a sense of belonging and are more able to say no to drugs and alcohol.

Glory Page, a Mound parent, said that is a major worry. “I would like my children to be able to say no and be taught those skills.”

Does Project Self-Esteem work? Bielen and others insist it does.

Lawrence A. Fisher, now superintendent of Cold Spring School District in Santa Barbara, was the principal at an Orange County elementary school in 1978 when the program was introduced. He later wrote his doctoral thesis on the project. He concluded, after surveying 200 children from three school districts, that the program raises self-esteem.

Sally Warrick, an education specialist in the Orange County Department of Education, said a survey released a few months ago showed that Project Self-Esteem is among the programs credited for a reduction in drug use.

“The program has been well received over the years,” she said. “The students are better able to stand up for themselves and say no.”