Kids on the Block

The Kids on the Block puppets may have been performing their final shows of the school year Thursday at Ross Elementary and LBJ Elementary, but the lessons involved are designed to linger for years.

Fourth- and fifth-graders at Ross Elementary stared solemnly at the brown-haired puppet John Sanchez as he told them the rest of his story about how he and his friend Hector joined a gang.

“When we got to the hospital they told us that Hector had taken a bullet to the lung. I never thought that choices we’d made when we were 11 or 12 would effect us, but the choices you make today effect where you’ll be tomorrow,” the puppet Sanchez said.

“(The show) was good because it was coming to tell us don’t do drugs and don’t join gangs,” fourth-grader Chester Pulliam said.

 The Kids on the Block is a puppet troop made up of parents, grandparents and volunteers from the community. Every fall they tour half of the ECISD elementary schools performing their plays about not being bullies and staying out of gangs. The 30-minute program is geared to fourth- and fifth-grade audiences and deals with the dangers of gangs and gang violence.

“We’ve been doing this for many years, and the puppet show is fun while I bring the reality of it to the kids,” ECISD police officer Leslie Alexander said. Lining up 20 kids, she told them that if they joined a gang, then statistics show 60 percent — 12 of the 20 — would be dead by the age of 18.

The other Kids on the Block show deals with bullying and uses a puppet that has cerebral palsy to show second- and third-grade students that someone can be different and still be accepted.