Curriculum Overview
Extensions curriculum, authored by Naya Arbiter and Fernando Mendez for the Teaching and Therapeutic Community, were developed over the course of several decades. Substance abuse treatment, in-prison rehabilitation, transitional living, domestic violence, anger management, parenting, halfway house, and at-risk youth programs can easily integrate Extensions curriculum into their instruction.
Extensions curriculum incorporates topics such as, Criminal and Addictive Thinking, Anger Management, Aggression and Violence, Domestic Violence, Relapse Prevention, Parenting, Health Education, and Substance Abuse Education. Proven effective in aiding recidivism reduction and relapse prevention, the curriculum also helps participants develop life skills that are applicable for daily use in the workplace, at home, and in school.
These volumes have been extracted and compiled from materials originally produced as retreat workbooks, seminar handouts, and orientation pamphlets. Each volume has both a student workbook and Demonstrator Guide, the latter which contains specific delivery instructions to enable facilitators (demonstrators) to maximize benefit to their students.
Extensions Curriculum is developed specifically for those marginalized populations whose experiences are rarely, accurately, reflected in mainstream media, educational materials or recovery literature. These curriculums have been used in Therapeutic Communities internationally and are ideal for men and women in residential, outpatient, and incarcerated treatment settings.
In addition to consulting, Naya Arbiter is an approved continuing education provider with NAADAC (The Association for Addiction Professionals) and CBBS (California Board of Behavioral Sciences), and has helped numerous programs implement the curriculum as part of their quality assurance systems as a method to monitor program effectiveness and meet clinical requirements set forth by licensing agencies. Naya Arbiter is also experienced in training faculty to improve student retention, relapse prevention, culture change, and recidivism reduction.
Extensions curriculum are designed to foster personal growth, emotional literacy, and social responsibility.
Why Extensions Curriculum?
All too often, the traditional materials used by drug treatment programs focus solely on the ‘presenting symptom’ (drug addiction, alcoholism) and rarely on the ‘whole-person’ or the etiology of the presenting symptom.
Extensions curriculum presents information that the student/client can apply personally (microcosm) and relate to globally (macrocosm). Quotes, stories, biographies and anecdotes from national and international role models who engaged in a process of positive personal change while contributing to their communities, are consistently referenced. For instance, the group process is used within the context of a Therapeutic Community and Twelve Step, but was also utilized by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Additionally, the curriculum incorporates important work done by Lew Yablonsky, Alice Miller, Richard Rhodes, Sam Keen, George De Leon, and other pioneers in the field.
Teaching and learning, especially in the group process, is, in large part, about “story”. Jungian analyst, Helen Luke once stated that, “The world is not defined so much by the battles that have been won and lost but by the stories that we love and believe in.” The culture of the convicted, the addicted, of the street, and of degradation, is a culture which embodies oral tradition and story—albeit toward destructive ends. Many students have single mindedly focused on developing strategies for getting what they wanted; securing drugs, committing crimes, and manipulating for personal gain. These strategies i.e. “stories” are passed and shared within any drug using/criminal community. Students have demonstrated the ability to focus, but lack the experience of focusing on giving rather than getting. Their focus has primarily been on short-term, rather than long-term gratification. To internalize “right living”, as articulated by Dr. George DeLeon, is a process not an event. Ideally, treatment programs provide the materials, tools, resources, and a “village” in which to practice skills which will grow and develop long past the treatment episode.
