Educating Teens on 9-1-1 Awareness

Cell Phone Sally has proven to be a great resource and mascot for teaching children about 9-1-1 emergency services. While Cell Phone Sally is appealing to small children, she is not always the best choice for education when it comes to high school students. Educating high school or even middle school kids can serve as somewhat of a challenge because you want them to understand the information and retain it. But what teenager wants to learn about 9-1-1?

Joe Thompson of Huntingdon County 9-1-1 spoke with several different entities across the United States to formulate some ideas on how to teach emergency services information to teenagers. What he came up with has turned into a successful endeavor so he wanted to share it with other educators.

Huntingdon County 9-1-1 teamed up with Huntingdon Borough Police and PennDOT (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) to present programs on “9-1-1 Awareness and Teen Injury Prevention” to students in grades 9th through 12th.

“The 9-1-1 awareness portion of the presentation was a brief PowerPoint on what teens need to know about 9-1-1,” Joe said. “It was specifically designed for a teen audience which is arguably the most difficult age group to address.”

After speaking about 9-1-1, Joe said the Huntingdon Borough Police School Resource Officer then spoke briefly to the teens about a law in Pennsylvania called the 9-1-1 Good Samaritan Law. This law was created for when teens call for emergency medical help for another teen when the use of drugs or alcohol is involved. After the Resource Officer spoke, Joe introduced the distracted driving simulator portion of the presentation. During this time, the kids were able to see just how difficult it is to text and drive without hitting common obstacles you would find on the road.

“The students were really engaged. I made sure my presentation was short and fast-moving with points I thought teens could follow about 9-1-1.” Joe said. “The kids each watched and used the simulator. It went really well.”

If you are interested in more information on Joe’s program, you can contact him at jthompson911@hotmail.com. Below you can find local news stories that covered the presentation. Do you have a successful public education program in your area? Share it with Cell Phone Sally and we will share it with the blog world!

To check out the news coverage: http://911routes.com/huntingdoncounty911

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