Ferris Bueller meets his match

By Kathleen Dannenhold
School of Nursing

Looking back on the days when she worked as a school nurse, Dr. Leona Eggert recalls that she was a “last ditch resource” for “skippers” - students looking for an excused absence from class. Sensing that many of these students had needs that were not being met, she worked with the assistant principal and school counselor to pull together a group of parents, teachers and some of the “skippers” to see what could be done. What she experienced changed her life.

Research Coordinator Monica Mohaghegh from Project MAPS (Measuring Adolescent Potential for Suicide) interviews a high school student using assessment tools developed by Eggert and her group.

“Even the small amount of attention received during this meeting seemed to have an impact,” she explains. “I wondered what a larger program of recognition might do.”

Several years later, as a nursing doctoral student, Eggert had the chance to find out. Required to do an ethnographical study for a research methods class, Eggert decided to study this special group of high school students. She began interviewing young people who frequently skipped school to understand their communication styles. What she learned formed the basis for a program that would be repeatedly honored for its excellence and widely adapted by school and governmental agencies across the country and around the world.

But the first insight came from those early interviews with skippers, interviews in which they described themselves as “smart skippers”: students who wanted to skip class and have fun, but who still saw themselves as in control and graduating from high school. These students distinguished themselves from the “don’t care skippers” - those whose free-time forays into drugs and alcohol had debilitated them to the point where they were out of control and could no longer craft “good excuses” for their “skips” from various classes.

By contrast, “smart skippers” such as those made famous by the popular film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” often had very elaborate systems for keeping track of their truancies with various teachers.

What was the appeal of skipping, Eggert wondered, or of drug use? And could it be replaced with something equally or more attractive?

The answers to these questions led to “Reconnecting Youth”, a program for teens that both identifies those at risk and offers alternatives for helping them become reconnected. Although “smart skippers” might seem willingly uninvolved with school, what Eggert found was that the need to belong was preeminent in their thinking.

Lee Eggert. Photo by Gavin Sisk

“That’s why these kids are always ‘hanging around’ the fringes of school, even when they are truant,” Eggert observes. “But, the more they stay away, the harder it becomes to go back.”

So Eggert and her co-researchers from the School of Nursing came up with an alternative: invite “smart skippers” to be part of a special class created just for them. Fill the class with everything that “smart skippers” were looking for outside of school: fun, a small group to relate to, personal attention, and a feeling of control about what happens to them.

Thus “Reconnecting Youth” was born, a life skills class in the school setting, taught by teachers who were specially trained by Eggert and her fellow researchers. Unlike other approaches to “problem” students, this approach focused on prevention. “Rather than treating problems after they begin,” she explains, “we wanted a program that met the students’ needs about belonging and feeling good about themselves. And what we found is that prevention works.”

The program has produced a 20 percent increase in grade point average among students who participate, as well as a 60 percent decrease in hard drug use. In the semester-long class, students learn how to set goals, make decisions, manage stress, handle anger and depression, communicate better, and monitor their progress. But there was another, even more important discovery: it also had an impact on decreasing depression in the young people who participated, thus reducing their risk of suicidal behaviors. Because of this, the program was funded a second time, as a suicide-prevention approach.

“Few school-based comprehensive approaches had been tested,” Eggert explains, “and no reliable interview tools were available to assess the risk factors in these young people.”

Since 1994, “Reconnecting Youth: a Peer Group Approach to Building Life Skills” has expanded to include parents in the prevention plan. “Too often,” Eggert explains, “these same students who were always truant were also the ones who failed to meet other school requirements. Obviously their needs were not being met in many different ways.”

“Reconnecting Youth” has been cited as a “top tier” program by the White House and was named as one of the nation’s top five violence prevention programs. It was also selected for the 1999 Exemplary Substance Abuse Prevention Awards. The program model is currently being used by more than 1,400 schools, clinics, mental health centers, detention centers and private practices both in the United States and in other countries. It has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

As the Spence Endowed Professor of Psychosocial and Community Health in the School of Nursing, Eggert is justifiably proud of what she and her colleagues have achieved. But she is also deeply committed to helping this “often invisible” segment of our society in other ways. As director of the Washington State Youth Suicide Prevention Project, a position she held from 1995-99, Eggert led a statewide campaign to teach every citizen to recognize risk factors in youth suicide prevention.

“I have always been drawn to these kids,” she reflects. “I have seen such wonderful qualities in them, right below the surface, qualities of unrealized potential. I think that is the part about nursing research which is different from so much of the other research being done: focusing on the underserved, the less visible.”

She also has shown that investing in “smart skippers” while they are still in high school saves society from treating them later on for school failure, suicidal behaviors, drug abuse and violent or aggressive behaviors.

“All of these are related to drug use,” Eggert notes, “And prevention can work to decrease these problems, given the right tools and dedicated adults.”