Rise Above It Now

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The Rise Above It Now (RAIN) program is an in-school prevention program that aims to thwart the early onset of risky youth behavior. It is a skills building program intended to enhance social competence skills, and encourage students to apply these skills when dealing with daily challenges, problems, and decisions. The RAIN program teaches and reinforced cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills like critical-thinking and social problem solving. Students are taught the thinking skills necessary to analyze issues, create alternative solutions, and consider repercussions before making decisions. Cognitive-behavioral methods such as coaching, modeling, rehearsing skills, and reinforcement are used to promote responsible decision-making skills …show more content…
Deviant behaviors can fluctuate over time as the learning process continues. Eventually there is usually stability over time, but behaviors can change due to time and exposure to different situations (Akers, 1997). According to social learning theory, conforming and deviant behaviors are learned through differential reinforcement, differential association, definitions and imitation. Differential reinforcement is described by Akers (1997) as “learning through rewards and punishments” (50). Differential association refers to “direct association and interaction with others who engage in certain kinds of behaviors or express norms, values, and attitudes supportive of such behaviors” (Akers & Jensen, 2006, 38). Definitions are an individual’s attitudes towards acts and define them as right or wrong. The last facet of social learning, imitation is simply defined as “observational learning” (Akers, 1997, 50). The concept proposed by social learning theory is that criminal and deviant behavior is more likely when these four concepts work together to “instigate and strengthen nonconforming over conforming acts” (Akers, 1997, 50). The likelihood that an individual will engage is criminal or deviant activity is increased when they associate with others who partake in criminal behaviors. Associating with deviant peers results in the