Buffalo County 10th grade students from Alma, Cochrane-Fountain City, Gilmanton, and Mondovi School Districts participated in the sixth annual Tenth Grade Prevention Day on Tuesday, December 10, 2024. Tom Goeltz from SafetyTom Consulting was the first of two featured presentations. Mr. Goeltz has spoken to hundreds of thousands of students throughout the nation and he has been a part of this prevention day since its inaugural event! He shared about his personal tragedy of losing his daughter and her unborn child due to a horrific crash caused by a distracted driver. Goeltz’s story and powerful message caught the attention of sophomore students. Goeltz identified distracted driving as texting, calling, focusing on passengers in the vehicle and other distractions in the vehicle that pull the driver away from focusing physically, visually, or cognitively on the road. Goeltz illustrated for students how reaction time is decreased when a driver, either a student or an adult, tries to multitask while driving. Goeltz also provided students with strategies to reduce their addiction to distracted driving.
The second presentation was Steph Page sharing how Your Story Matters. Page, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, spoke with students about healthy relationships with yourself, with your partner, and with your community. She encouraged students to cultivate authentic connections with other people to share your purpose and find the value in your life. She reminded tenth graders that all people crave belonging with others and relationships truly matter and the way that you live your life matters and has impact, positive or negative, for you and others in our communities. She asked, “What if the norm was seeing the humanity in others?” She connected relationships to domestic violence and human trafficking and reminded everyone that human trafficking happens in our personal relationships. Human trafficking is a spectrum from manipulative behavior to exploiting others for profit. Human trafficking happens here where we live and it happens in families. The average age of first trafficking in the U.S. is 14 years of age. Page shared red flags of harmful relationships with students and encouraged them to be advocates for each other.
The topic of distracted driving and healthy dating relationships was selected as target prevention area for Buffalo County tenth graders based on local research data. The annual 10th grade prevention day was sponsored and funded by the Buffalo County Partnership Council (BCPC). BCPC is a local coalition made up of students, educators, law enforcement, university faculty, and public health advocates that provide collaborative prevention programming to educate youth and their families to make healthy choices and positively influence people and policies.
