Every 15 Minutes - Teaching Teens Through Emotional Impact

Last month, in cooperation with the California Highway Patrol, Lake County Sheriff, Lake County Probation, Kelseyville Fire and many others in the community, Kelseyville High School staged a car accident in front of the school as part of Every 15 Minutes, a program that introduces the real-life consequences of drinking and driving to our students.   

Programs like this are designed to turn statistics into a sense of reality for teens who often feel as though they are immune from the tragedies associated with driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Teen brains work differently than those of adults when it comes to decision-making and problem-solving. Adolescent behavior is influenced more by the emotional and reactive part of the brain, called the amygdala (sometimes called the lizard brain), and less by the thoughtful, logical frontal cortex (the last part of the brain to develop).

This is part of why connecting teens to an emotional experience like the Every 15 Minutes program has a greater chance of penetrating their sense of invincibility than quoting statistics, as compelling as the data is. 

The Kelseyville High School Every 15 Minutes event was the culmination of months of coordination and planning by dozens of people, from school personnel to law enforcement, student families, and local business owners.   

At the beginning of the school year, Principal Mike Jones and Vice Principal Sarah Frazell started meeting at least monthly with the organizing team, choosing the students who would participate and planning how the day would unfold. 

They carefully selected students who represented all walks of life at the high school, whose loss would affect a great many people. The team focused not only on the major logistics, but also on the small details that brought the experience to life. 

On the day of the event, all high school students were brought outside to witness the staged car accident. Then, a student was pulled from class every fifteen minutes and a red rose was left on their desk. The students pulled from class were sequestered in the gym with no access to phones and no contact with the outside world until the following day. They were just…gone. 

The staged events of the day were video recorded to tell the story of a senior ditch day where students who left school to get drunk then got behind the wheel and caused a fatal accident. 

The video follows each of the students–the driver who just wants to call his mom as he is booked into county jail, the nurses who work furiously to save an accident victim but ultimately fail, the disbelief of students as their friends are taken away in an ambulance or medical helicopter. 

The video also follows as the chaplain visits parents at their home or workplace to inform them that their child has died, asking where they would like to send their child’s remains. Even those who planned the event and knew what to expect felt the emotional gut punch.

Tombstones of those who died were installed on the KHS lawn by a retired volunteer for the highway patrol. At the “memorial” the following day, the whole high school gathered in the gym to the music of bagpipes played by a CalFire employee. Students walked past a casket, which had a mirror and reflected their own face back to them as they placed a rose. Students received a program with an agenda and obituaries of the students who “died,” including photos, personal details, and aspirations like “hoped to study nursing” or “wanted to become a computer engineer.” 

The video of the staged event was shared, displaying students convincingly play-acting the decision to ditch school and get drunk, the resulting accident, and everything that followed. Letters from students who “died” were read aloud, as were letters from parents to the children they would never see again. Counselors and mental health professionals were available to support students as they took it all in. 

Our KHS principal and vice principal, Mike and Sarah, asked me to thank the donors and volunteers who made this possible. 

Mike said, “We had so many good people helping, from the lady at REACH making sure we had the insurance stuff right to the county guys who closed the roads, to Store 24 (Mount Konocti Gas and Mart) who let us land the helicopter on their property. The lady from Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary provided the hearse and made sure we knew how much room to allow for the casket. The nurses and doctor at Sutter were great. All those people made it happen. They guided us. They see it in real time all the time.”

Also, this program wouldn’t have been possible without the generous donations of our major financial sponsors, California Highway Patrol and Adventist Health, and the countless donations of time and money from so many others.

The good news is that since the Every 15 Minutes program was established decades ago, alcohol-related vehicle fatalities have dropped to every 39 minutes. While we would like the fatalities to drop a lot more, we know this program makes a difference. The student who played the drunk driver in the KHS program said the experience changed his life forever. 

If you would like to view the Every 15 Minutes video, you can view it here.

As graduation day approaches and end-of-year celebrations get going, we wish everyone a safe and joyful time.