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WORLAND – Worland High School W Club members are helping to reinforce healthy living lessons taught at Worland East Side and South Side Elementary schools by giving grade related presentations to the students. W Club students have been doing their presentations for about eight years.

“They (W Club) come to the elementary once a semester for a class presentation and sometimes come down and have lunch with the kids. They have a variety of lessons for the older grades about things like friendships, feelings and good decision making. They do a really neat truth commercial for the fifth grade and a puppet show for the kindergarten and first grade,” East and South Side Elementary Guidance Counselor Rebecca Luhm stated.

One of the puppet shows reinforced the idea that students shouldn’t ingest anything without the permission of their parents. Luhm explained that during the show one of the puppets found something that looked like a piece of candy and talked about whether it should be eaten or not and why it shouldn’t be and then it’s discovered that the candy is actually someone’s medicine. “They (W Club) reinforce the idea to not put anything into your body, even if it’s something that you can buy in a store, without mom and dad’s permission,” Luhm added.

W Club members are role models for the younger students, required to have at least a 3.5 grade point average, participate in at least three school activities and commit to being substance free. “We try to emphasize to the kids that they (W Club) are kids that are doing well, they are going to class, they are getting good grades, they are in a lot of healthy activities and they are substance free,” Luhm said. “The kids just think that the W Club members are the coolest thing ever,” she added.

The W Club members did their presentations at the East Side Elementary School last week and at the South Side Elementary School both last week and this week. The elementary students will be sending thank you notes to the W Club members for the presentations. The younger elementary students will be signing a thank you card and the older elementary students will be sending hand-written thank-you notes saying what they learned. “They do such a good job on them, you would be shocked at the quality of their thank-you cards,” Luhm stated.