W.A.T.C.H.
How many students heard the message of your project?
400
Estimated percentage of your student body?
51-60%
Who has your project aimed to reach?
Freshman class, Sophomore class, Junior class, Senior class, School professionals, Parents, Community at large
Objective:
Our objective is to make sure people watch the road and keep pedestrians safe. What does it mean to “watch the road”? Well we have a slogan W.A.T.C.H. This stands for W – Warning, A – Animals, T – Time, C – Children, H – Hands-free. To us this means look out for WARNING signs. Look out of ANIMALS crossing the street. Give yourself extra TIME to make sure you’re not rushing. Make sure there are no CHILDREN crossing the street or running across the road. And make sure you are keeping your HANDS-FREE so you can have both hands on the wheel. These matter because it could cause people to get injured or hurt including yourself.
Target Audience:
Our audience is children, parents, adults, BBHS teachers, staff, administration, crossing guards, law enforcement, and the Bound Brook Community. This project is to catch the attention of adult and student drivers to W.A.T.C.H the roads. Our targeted audience received a “If you watch, W.A.T.C.H the road” bracelet that represents our slogan/ message we are trying to put out to keep our community safer.
Execution:
We first had to come up with a slogan for our project we came up with “If you want to watch, W.A.T.C.H. the road”. Next we all worked together to figure out little ideas to put our Slogan W.A.T.C.H. The First thing we did was find a word for each of our Letters, we ended up putting together W – Warning, A – Animals, T – Time, C – Children, H – Hands-free. Then our next step was to make a PSA video on W.A.T.C.H and why you should watch the road and stay hands-free. This video showed friends hanging out listening to music and the passenger asked the driver to change the song, the driver goes to change the song on her apple watch and hits a pedestrian because she wasn’t watching the road. After that we worked on making a google form for parents and their children to spread awareness of the rules of the crosswalk. We found information on how to avoid hitting deer, because deer are highly populated near us. After that we handed out bracelets and described our project to teachers, staff, and peers, with our slogan “If you want to watch, W.A.T.C.H. the road”. This was meant to spread awareness on the subject. We interviewed teachers and students around our school to find out how they make sure they drive safely and don’t rush to school. And finally we interviewed a few crossing guards from around our school to find out what they see when kids are crossing the street.
Teamwork:
We developed a strong aspect of teamwork while working on this project. Students would write down notes on the various topics we talked about during planning. Group pictures were taken of students working together on handing out our bracelets around the school. The principal, athletic director, director of pupil personnel services, and the principal’s secretary were all photographed receiving a bracelet from our team. As a team, we traveled to our outside community to local restaurants, churches, and local first responders to give short descriptions of our campaign as well as bracelets. There was a sign-in sheet every meeting where student’s also were held accountable and had to show what work was completed and what that individual contributed to each meeting. That aspect of the sign-in held students to a standard of contributing, working as a team, and learning to problem solve if certain members couldn’t attend a meeting. Developing a strong camaraderie was vital in creating an effective campaign. The members of our group have become better friends through connecting and supporting the same cause to keep drivers safe on the roads.
Use of resources:
We used our local police department and crossing guards to help us with the project. When we saw our local police we gave the bracelets and explained our slogan. We also went around town with envelopes which contained bracelets and a note saying what we do as an organization and what we stand for hoping to spread our awareness (W.A.T.C.H). We went around local businesses giving out bracelets with their orders which they loved and appreciated.
Use of media:
We used Facebook to spread out awareness and show the importance of W.A.T.C.H. Some of our members made a post on Instagram explaining W.A.T.C.H and how it can benefit your lives and keep you and your loved ones safe. Snapchat and Instagram were also used to post a link which was used to gather information for our project. We did a PSA explaining and showing why it is important to watch the road and to be aware of your surroundings. This PSA was spread around school.
Thoroughness:
Our project gives a good demonstration of understanding of teen driving safety in some ways. The project shows how careful you really have to be when driving. It shows that even an Apple Watch can cause something terrible to happen. An Apple Watch is a common device that plenty of people nowadays carry around on their wrist.This makes our project relatable and very realistic, it should catch a teenager’s attention. Every driver should be aware of the dangers of taking your eyes off the road when driving. People use their watches as a mini phone in the video it shows how someone changes the song off their Apple Watch in that split second you look down it can be extremely dangerous and anyone who is a driver should realize.The project will really make teens notice how pre cautious they should be when driving especially when they don’t have a plenty of experience.This project will give a good advice on a bad habit that should be stopped my teenagers ,people in general should not be doing this because the outcome is horrible.
Impact:
There are many ways we have made an effort to impact our community for the better. We try to help our community by being safer drivers and safer civilians while on the road or sidewalk. This is the reason we created W.A.T.C.H. Our team went around asking students and teachers various questions about their road safety. For example, one question we asked was “Do you use your phone while driving?” Surprisingly all of their answers were that they did. By asking these questions we hope to make them think twice before using their phones or other devices. Other ways we impacted our community are passing out our W.A.T.C.H bracelets to churches, policemen, fire departments, etc, explaining what it stands for, and spreading the message to friends and family. We hope the community will watch for warnings, be mindful of animals, be aware of the time, watch out for children on the roads, and never be hands-free.
Sustainability:
Our group project will have a lasting impact on our target audience by showcasing the dangers of distracted driving and how to avoid any accidents. We have an acronym (WATCH) that can easily be remembered with important messages for the audience. There is a Google slide that was made that explains what WATCH means with critical information supporting our claims. A video was recorded and edited that demonstrates the consequences of distracted driving. It conveys another important message to our audience, reminding them to keep their eyes on the road at all times.
On the Google slide covering WATCH, you can find out that the acronym WATCH stands for warning, animals, time, children, and hands-free. Our group put the most effort into providing as much information about each topic as possible in order to educate our target audience with useful information that they may want to consider the next time they grab their car keys. The ultimate goal of our presentation is to educate and to spread awareness, as this is a very important topic that we believe should be covered more often. Our target audience will learn valuable lessons and will hopefully spread the message for others to see. Our project will make our target audience better drivers overall and will make the roads a safer place to drive on.
Unexpected Lessons Learned:
We unexpectedly learned a lot about each other and what we did not know about some well known rules of the road. For example, most of us did not know that you are supposed to get off your bike to walk across the road when coming to a crosswalk. It is intended to learn about rules of the road but we were not expecting to find out about so many new statistics. Students also learned about their peers. Many of the seniors drive to school and were able to share their experiences with the members of the club. Most members of the club do not drive and learned from the older students about the various rules of the road.
We also learned the importance of keeping behavioral issues low. With the pandemic it became more common for students to get detentions and they would not be able to participate in the club every week because our school policy states that students cannot do club meetings if they owe detentions. The students were able to work on their behavior and participate more often. It was surprising to learn about self reflection in a project about driving safety but we were able to reflect on the recent difficult times and become future defensive drivers.
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
Posters, markers, colored pencils, tape – $100
Editing for video PSA – $100
Bracelets designed, ordered, and shipped – $255 (300 count)
Total – $455.00
MEDIA
