NORTHFIELD Reading about Northfield 's drug-related issues in the media wasn 't enough for Carly Oto.

After watching the issue unfold in local and regional news for nearly two years, the recent graduate of Northfield High School decided during her last semester of school that something more had to be done.

Oto was enrolled in a service learning-oriented independent study with high school teacher Sarah Swan McDonald. After consulting with Swan McDonald and Melissa Larson, a social worker at the middle school, Oto decided to use the independent study as a platform to launch an anti-drug campaign aimed at creating a more positive atmosphere for Northfield Middle School students.

For four weeks over the spring semester Oto put up handmade posters with drug use statistics, drug facts or slogans like, Maybe you just think that everyone else is doing it, up in the hallways of the middle school. But she didn 't stop there.

Oto also spent two days in the middle school cafeteria, collecting anti-drug pledges from middle school students. In exchange for the pledges, which asked students to stay drug-free and create a positive environment in the middle school, middle-schoolers received a rubber bracelet with the word Clean stamped on it.

Eventually, Oto was able to collect 562 signatures roughly two-thirds of the middle school through her pledge drive. With the colorful student pledge sheets, Oto then created an enormous collage that spelled out Clean NMS Spring ‘09 and hung it in the middle school cafeteria.

 

The campaign, Oto said, helped foster positive values among the students at the middle school, whom she believes are particularly vulnerable to peer pressure and experimentation with drugs or alcohol. Oto 's project was funded by a $400 grant by the Northfield Healthy Community Initiative.

I felt that it needed to be targeted at middle school students, because they 're at a place where they 're looking at how they can fit in and be accepted by peers, said Oto, who also mentors younger students. She said she loves the idea of making a positive difference in someone 's life.

Swan McDonald, a proponent of service learning in the Northfield School District, believes the educational concept teaches students leadership skills and fosters community engagement.

There 's such power in a high school student connecting with younger students, and in this case she was a real leader, Swan McDonald said. For Carly to see that she could teach other people about service learning, but be a leader to help that conversation occur, I think it 's a great life lesson for her personally.

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