The Grade 6 students in Lindsay King's art class at Robert Rundle School seemed too young to worry about drunk driving. Yet together they quickly got to work to polish off a number of bags for distribution to St. Albert's liquor stores. Every bag featured a heartfelt message discouraging people from drinking and driving.
Robert Rundle students have taken part in the Students Against Drunk Driving campaign for some years, home room teacher Wayne Durkson said. He believes there's value of getting his students to think about consequences, even though they are only in elementary school.
“Imagine how powerful the message they write can be. Seeing these bags in liquor stores gives people pause to think,” he said.
Grade 6 is also the age that students take the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program. Robert Rundle's Grade 6 students begin studying DARE in the new year. The two programs, SADD and DARE are aimed at making very young children think about the choices they make.
This year 256 Alberta schools will take part in the annual SADD campaign and will colour the bags with Don't Drink and Drive messages.
“We have sent out 60,000 bags,” said SADD Provincial liaison Arthur Lee.
The campaign has gained momentum, Lee said with just 10,000 bags printed four years ago and more and more sent out to participating schools every year. Students are asked to complete the bags before Dec. 16 and they are then distributed to the local liquor stores. This year, St. Albert liquor store bags will have been done by the students at Robert Rundle and they have a local message.
The approach used to teach the students about this societal problem is gentle but meaningful.
“Focus on the positive side,” said King, stressing to her students that they must remember their message will be seen by adults.
“You are thanking the adults for their response to what you draw upon the bag. Adults are most likely to respond if they see what you write because they care about keeping children safe. They want to keep you safe,” she said.
Most of the students drew vehicles that they saw being in some sort of peril.
“Does this make sense?” asked one student as he held up a drawing of a car crashing into a stick-like telephone pole.
It made complete sense, even though the telephone pole was just a T- shape and the vehicle was just an outline. The message was clear.
Tegan Knutson, 11, drew a series of symbols: a liquor bottle, a Red Cross, a yellow Volkswagen and a mathematical equal sign beside the word “Bad.” Her symbols added up to bad, she said.
Knutson told her friends that she was in an accident last year when her mother's car was hit by another vehicle driven by a suspected impaired driver. She clearly remembers the shock she felt during the collision and immediately afterward.
“Our car spun around and hit the curb. My mom yelled. A lot. There was one firetruck, one ambulance and three police cars,” she said.
Knutson remembered that her glasses went flying out of the car and that riding in the ambulance to the hospital was OK, because she was kindly treated.
Her hope for the bag she coloured is that whoever gets it at the store understands.
“It's not nice being in an accident. It's scary,” she told her classmates.
Kolton Howe, 10, put lots of colour on his bag in hopes that would-be liquor shoppers might notice his message. He tried his best to make it look close to home.
He quickly drew a car falling over a cliff into a big body of blue below. Next he wrote “Sturgeon River” on the water as he pencilled in, “Don't drink and drive.”
December is the busy time for this SADD campaign but the message continues all year long, Lee said.
“One picture drawn by an Alberta student will be featured on one-million bags to be distributed by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Control board on the May long weekend,” he said, adding that he sees the message as circular because the bags will have an impact on every generation.
“It's full circle because the students and teachers try to communicate the message. And the end message, that goes to people in liquor stores is strong because they see that it was hand drawn by a student in their neighbourhood. They see that the message Don't Drink and Drive was brought to them by a school nearby.”
