TEAM SPIRIT HELPS TEENS STOP DUI

It takes a team effort to teach teamwork. That's one of the lessons the developers of Team Spirit have learned and passed on the last two years.

On Tuesday, the Team Spirit Leadership Conference will start its third year of teaching teams from regional high schools how to help their schools curb teen-age drinking and driving.

The Team Spirit program, which is spreading to other Missouri cities, has its origins in Cape Girardeau, where it started as a pilot program in 1995. This year's co-organizers, Sharee Galnore and Donna Boardman, have been planning things for this year's 132 participants for a year.

Boardman said the work involved in developing the workshops, speeches and demonstrations cannot be developed in a short period of time.

Team Spirit is funded by the Missouri Division of Highway Safety and Safe Communities. The program aims not only to warn teen-agers of the dangers of drunk driving but to teach high school students how to organize a plan of attack against teen DWI that can be used in their communities.

"A lot of what they learn here will really help them as they organize meetings," Galnore said.

The conference attracts teams from a wide variety of communities, Boardman said. Rural, urban, small, large, public and private schools will all be represented. Boardman said teams from Elsinore, Jefferson City, Notre Dame, Cape Girardeau Central and Jackson will be attending, as well as others.

Team Spirit will utilize law enforcement and substance abuse professionals as well as motivational instructors and victims of DWI in its presentations.

Galnore said everyone involved in the program, from students, counselors and chaperones to event organizers, will be restricted to the Victorian Inn for the duration of the conference.

The students were selected by their schools to attend. Many of them are already involved in programs like Students Against Drunk Driving.

"When you ask kids to work on any kind of change in their schools, for one or two kids that would be next to impossible," Galnore said. "But if you can get 10 kids of like mind working on an issue, they can go out and get other kids involved and it has a better chance of succeeding."

Galnore, who is the director of Cape Girardeau Safe Community, said the student Team Spirit participants are often surprised to discover that their plans already have the backing of their schools and will be used when developed.

Last year, a team from Delta High School formed a plan for a post-prom supervised dance party that would let students have fun without having to drink or use drugs. The students solicited sponsorship from area businesses and, in April, the party was attended by as much as 95 percent of the student body.

Galnore said team plans can range from a specific event, as with Delta, or a long-term plan. She said another team decided the parents in their community were not properly informed about the number of teens that drank and set about to develop a plan to correct that.

What the leadership conference attempts to do is allow the students to develop a plan they feel strongly about and one that they will be passionate about setting up.

"If we give them a plan and tell them that's what we want them to do, they might not be too enthusiastic about carrying it out," Galnore said.