The Binghamton City School Districts’ new after-school program looks to decrease aggressive behavior through sports and academics.
Preventing Long-Term Anger and Aggression in Youth or PLAAY Program, works to teach students valuable coping skills and in-the-moment stress management strategies.
Various teachers and coaches help mentor upper-class high school students, who then, in turn, mentor younger students.
The mentees are primarily made up of 6th graders from East and West Middle Schools.
The mentors help the younger students with their homework and take part in various sports and other physical training.
Head Football Coach Mike Ramil, who serves as one of the program’s instructors, says they try to translate lessons that can be taught through sports to real-life situations. “The idea is if you can get a kid to understand that if you curse or go after someone on the football field then you’ll get a 15-yard penalty and it’ll hurt the team. If you can get kids to understand that and avoid that on the football field then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do that in life too.”
Along with the homework and sports help, instructors and mentors hold sessions where they talk with the younger kids about what bothers them.
Read more and watch the news story on BinghamtonHomepage.com. Learn more about PLAAY, one of the NNEDLearn training tracks.