Steinert Safe Driving
How many students heard the message of your project?
1452
Estimated percentage of your student body?
91-100%
Who has your project aimed to reach?
Freshman class| Sophomore class| Junior class| Senior class| School professionals| Parents| Community at large
Objective:
Clearly state the objective of your project.
Steinert After Prom Parents Association (“we/our”) hosted its first afterprom party in 1994 and has continued to do so for the last 30 years. We are organized for the purpose of supporting the Steinert student body in making good choices throughout the year regarding substance abuse, alcohol awareness, safety awareness, and safe driving habits. Most years 300-350 students attended the afterprom. The pandemic prevented the party from occurring in 2020-2022. We were able to bring the event back last year in 2023 and 75 students attended. We felt confident that the party served its purpose of keeping those 75 students safe, but we want to get back to the pre-pandemic numbers and in order to do that, we need students and parents to know who we are again.
This year, our president (and campaign advisor) thought it was important to bring awareness to our core mission and educate our parents and students. We partnered with NJM and WhatsMyName Foundation this year to provide educational materials to the SHS community to promote safe driving and ride share habits. Entering the Champion Schools contest was a natural extension of our mission and we are excited to be part of it. It created an opportunity for the students to do something that they said they would’ve loved to do, but now had the backing of an organized program to create something real and sustainable. As for the After Prom Parents Association, it gave us the opportunity to engage our target audience – the students – to work with us on something and also get our name back on the minds of students and parents.
The objective of our student run campaign is to promote the concept of being a safe passenger when in the car with peers. We planned activities to gain social media followers to enable us to promote our messages to our target audience.
Execution:
Describe your project and its implementation.
We created IG and TikTok accounts to promote safe driving and being a safe passenger and completed engaging activities since the start of our campaign. We promoted our accounts by setting up a table during lunch with lollipops for Valentine’s Day, a poster and a QR code. We gained 187 followers. For St. Patrick’s Day, we promoted the theme of not testing your luck as a passenger that included a survey about how people behave as passengers. The survey reached social media, google classrooms, our teachers/parents and 250 fundraiser participants. Its 206 responses can be used as a baseline for future surveys to measure the effectiveness of our messages.
We collaborated with Teens on Fire to educate elementary students about safe driving and preventing distracted driving by reading to them and presenting a lesson to write safe driving notes that were then distributed to our SHS drivers. Joel Feldman spoke to us about his daughter who was killed by a distracted driver. His story and words were so impactful and moving (EndDD.org).
Jolea submitted an article to the school paper about our campaign.
SHS used to display a wrecked car on the corner during prom and graduation season. We worked with our principal and campus officer to bring this back and secured a car from a salvage yard and had a banner printed for the display. Our community, including our SHS students attending proms and graduating, will once again be reminded of the dangers of unsafe driving.
We are working on possibly designing our own safe driving stickers, and distributing them on the cars in the student parking lot. With these stickers, we hope to convey our message in a fun way that can include all of the student drivers. We are planning for our stickers to have a car on them with our motto “you can’t get home unless you drive safe.” If there is any room left on the sticker, we are going to include our social media handles to get even more of our peers involved in this campaign.
School/Community Engagement:
How did you reach your student body and the community? (examples: connecting with nearby colleges, schools, local police departments, persons affected by teen crashes, local/county/state governments, and local businesses)
As described elsewhere in this report, we collaborated with Teens of Fire to learn and also deliver lessons about ending distracted driving. Our advisor connected us with Mr. D’Elia, the Hamilton Township School District Studio Manager who is so energetic and passionate about his work and helped us create a video that we are excited to share with you and post to our social media pages. Our advisor also coordinated with the Steinert administration and resource officer to secure the car and new banner for the DUI awareness car on campus.
Creativity:
What makes your project unique and engaging? How did you engage with other student groups to creatively spread your message? (Examples: create artwork, music, plays, unique campaign slogan/logos)
As described in this report, we engaged with Teens on Fire and spread the message of safe driving / ending distracted driving to 258 elementary students and helped them create messages and drawings on cards that were then distributed to Steinert HS student drivers. Together, we also created safe driving messages during the morning announcements at school. The video we created with the help of our district studio manager is going to be posted to our IG and TikTok as well as the AfterProm Committee’s facebook page. That video contains so much information about our initiatives and was so fun to make.
Teamwork:
Show how you worked as a team in designing and implementing your project (examples: sign-in sheets at meetings, photos of the group working on tasks).
– We have had 6 meetings together to discuss strategy, brainstorm and plan our events. Including these meetings, we spent over 18 hours together from December 2023 – May 2024 working on the campaign
– The students attended the Steinert AfterProm Parent Association’s Jan. 9, 2024 meeting via zoom to introduce ourselves and describe the campaign we wanted to create.
– We have a group text with our advisor, and we are all in constant communication about meeting up, promoting the campaign, opportunities at school and in the community.
– We have documented our activities with tons of photos and videos and we are attaching a video that we created with our Hamilton Township School District Studio Manager to showcase them to you
– We have a Social Media QR Landing Page that directs people to our TikTok and/or Instagram page
Use of Research/Data:
Show how you used local resources to help identify, deliver, assess, and present your project (Examples: local/statewide/national data.).
The research we conducted was limited to our “Don’t test your luck” survey. Our project demonstrates an understanding of teen driving safety through its consistency and relatability. Initially, we thought of creating a passenger oriented campaign, since every one of us has once felt unsafe as a passenger. We figured that other people in our community have felt the same way too, so we created the survey to gauge what bad habits led to those feelings. We promoted the survey on social media, to 250 fundraiser participants, on the google classrooms of all grade levels at Steinert and to our teachers and parents. The survey returned 206 responses and the results can be used as a baseline for future surveys to measure the effectiveness of our messages with our audience.
Use of Media:
Document how you used media in your project (examples: local radio, TV, newspapers, social media, websites, video, PSAs).
– IG (400 followers (up from 210 before V-Day Publicity Event), TikTok (84 followers) – as of 4/25/24
– Spartan Sentinel – awaiting publication of an article
– AfterProm’s FB page
– TVs in Steinert HS – we provided a picture of the QR code to be displayed on the screen. Students would see it on the TV in the school library and in the main hallway.
– Morning Announcements at school as part of collaboration with Teens on Fire
Evaluation and Impact:
Describe how you measured the impact of your project (examples: pre/post observational studies, surveys, quizzes, interviews, etc.)
We collected some metrics for our new campaign to show the impact we’ve had in a short period of time from January – May.
1452 Steinert students
400 Instagram Followers
258 elementary students
204 Survey Participants
209 Share the Road Pledge signatures
84 TikTok Followers
20 Tuesday Posts
2 parking lots with updated safe driving signs
1 intersection for Safe Driving Awareness
Countless lessons learned and shared
Sustainability:
How will your project have a lasting effect on your target group?
Our project will continue to have a lasting effect on our peers as we will find new group members to be in charge of it next year. By passing on the same social media accounts that we have been using and have gained a large following, our message will continue to be spread in our school in years to come. We hope that next year’s group can participate in even more community events, and create engaging content for students to see on our social media.
Unexpected Lessons Learned:
Describe any unintended results that came out of your project.
By working on and getting this project started I learned that people who care about their community will help you with anything you need. The resources, help, and support that was given to our project from people around the school was very positive! Through other people interested in the safety of their community we were able to be a part of things like the Sayen Elementary safe driving assembly. Having tables set up during lunch periods to support our project was made possible because of the support from our principal! Our video submission with this project was put together and partially filmed by someone in our school’s community who was interested enough to help us out. There are adults and other teens who care just as much about the safety of our highschool drivers as we do, even if they are not directly a part of the program. Learning that getting support from the community is such a big part of being successful taught us a great lesson, and it is something we will all take into our futures!
Stipend Reporting:
Your school received a stipend to support your Champion School Teen Driving Safety Project. Additionally, any funds that you raised as a result of your project must be reinvested into transportation safety. The purpose of this report is to itemize expenditures for your project that were paid from the stipend
Banner to be displayed with wrecked car $100
Promotional Stickers (tbd, but anticipated cost) $300
Lollipops & Balloons for Valentine’s Day Campaign $104.49
Remainder to reimburse school for portion of costs to replace safe driving signs in parking lots $495.51
Total $1000
PROJECT MEDIA
