Home > Teachers Group > Discussion Board

After many years of teaching, I once again had to endure the Every 15 Minutes Program. The first day simulates the death of about 20 students and then stages an accident, students playing dead and drunk. The sheriffs, the ambulance, the helicopter and the coroner, all participate to show the students what happens in an accident. The second day is a Memorial service for the "lossed lives". Im wondering what other teachers think of these programs and if other districts do it differently.

My district does this more or less the same way.  We don't have helicopters and we don't do the memorial service.

As a teacher, I have never thought much of the whole thing.  I think teens are too smart to be much affected by this kind of play acting.

I remember when I was in HS and they brought a smashed-up car to our school.  I thought it was really dumb because it wasn't a car that had been smashed up in an actual drunk driving accident.

So it just seems like we go to all this effort to make this huge production that, in my opinion, most kids won't take seriously at all.

No, we don't do this at our high school. The only thing, to me, that seems to get through to kids is to hear directly from friends and families of teenagers who have been killed in drunk driving accidents. One personal account is much more dramatic and understandable to kids than stats and numbers. Kind of like reading the stats of numbers of men killed in the Civil War, and reading the accounts of Mary Chestnut....

I have worked in two high schools that attempted to reach students through these types of activities. In both schools, a demolished car was put on display in a prominent place on campus where students would have to walk past it several times during the day. They did look, and they didn't laugh or make jokes about it. In one of the schools, a number of students painted their faces chalky white and attended classes as the dead victims of car crashes. They did not speak or engage with others all day long. This proved to be a distraction for a while; after that, it lost its novelty.

We can't know if any of these efforts, anywhere, influenced even one teen to stop and think before making a tragic decision, since we can't know what might have happened but didn't. Any activity that raises awareness has to be considered a positive step, at least.

I agree with post one, most of these things seem pretty lame and I don't think people would learn this way. I think a better way is to invite people who have lost someone through drunk driving and someone who has made the mistake of driving drunk. Real people are the most persuasive. There are great organizations that do this sort of thing.

I agree with Post 5.  For years, our school shelled out money for a professional presentation with huge screens and a "hip" soundtrack (which the kids laughed at, by the way).  Then last year, the school switched gears and invited a mother from a nearby town to come speak.  The mother had recently lost her daughter, who drowned after getting drunk and wandering away from her friends at an outdoor party.  Her simple talk about the emotional impact of her daughter's death did more than any fancy simlation or presentation ever could.