Wenatchee Students Build Presentation About Distracted Driving

Distracted Driving Carnival presentation from Westside High School, Wenatchee

More information about this project:

I am Heidi Monroe, teacher at the WestSide High School in Wenatchee, WA. We agreed to do at least five of the suggested action steps to obtain a  $500 grant from your organization as part of the State Farm teen anti-distracted driving grant. I would like to share what we were able to accomplish.

Students in my Foundations classes embraced this project and created a “Carnival” day to share with the entire building. We attempted to obtain a speaker and wrecked car to have on display for the day, but after months of communication, that was not to be, so we went forward with what the students could create on their own.

Students split into groups and created stations to host at the “carnival” as well as taking on duties of organizing student flow and coordination with other teachers in our building for the event. Students in the school were given a check of card (designed to look like an iPhone). As they completed each station, hosts of the station initialed successful completion. Below is a description of the stations that were offered:

• An obstacle course was created for races. Students were asked to complete the race while texting a simple text on their phone (or type a number on a calculator if they didn’t have a phone). Each time an obstacle was touched, the racer had to start over. It was quite entertaining. During the race, the host repeated a variety of statistics for the racers and observers to learn about the dangers of texting and driving.
• Reaction time challenge asked students to catch a meter stick and record the distance up the stick each time to measure how fast their reaction time was. Then, they repeated he challenge while talking on a cell phone, and again while texting. There is a significant difference that participants cannot argue that increases the danger of driving when talking and/or texting.
• Multitask Challenge station asked students to time themselves doing two tasks interchangeably, then again doing the two tasks one at a time. Students learn that even when the tasks are easy, we are all approximately 50% less effective if we try to do them at the same time.
• The Sentence Search game timed students to match statistics that were written in creative ‘txt’ language with a card that had the same statistic in normal writing. This made them repetitively see, read, and interact with statistics.
• Various youtube videos (including the one my Summer class made at the Juvenile Detention Center) were collected and looped for students to watch while waiting between carnival games.
• A teacher, who had been in a rollover accident due to texting and driving, shared pictures and stories.
• Like a traditional cake walk, students created a ‘Memory Walk’. As the music played, participants walked in a circle over numbered papers. When the music stopped, if you were standing on the number that was drawn, you needed to pick up the number and read aloud the reverse side, which contained pictures and stories of people who have been injured or killed due to texting and driving.
• All carnivals need face painting, so ours did too. Students came up with various simple designs or sayings that could be painted on cheeks.

As soon as all signatures were earned at the other stations, students could then move to the commitment section of the carnival:

• Students decorated milk crates to have those willing to make a commitment to not text and drive to stand on and make a public pledge.
• Those making the pledge got to do three things:

1. Receive a “I Pledge to Not Text and Drive” bracelet.
2. Sign the “I PLEDGE” poster that was later hung in the office.
3. Sign the “Commitment Van”. A teacher in our building has a VW Van that is painted with Chalkboard Paint. We were able to acquire his van and allow students to sign it. The plan was for him to drive around with that for a while, but it rained that day, washing it all away shortly after our carnival…. bummer.

Students have put selected pictures from the carnival in a short video: http://youtu.be/DcoQIqO0EKE

I hear students talk about how important they felt by coordinating the ordering of the bracelets, communication with speaker/wrecked car (even though that didn’t pan out), and organizing the carnival. I hear reports from them almost daily of people they either see driving distracted or people they have confronted about driving distracted.

This is an extremely worthy project that is making a difference. Thank you for the opportunity.

Sincerely,

Heidi Monroe

Teacher, WestSide High School