Looking Ahead to the 2018 SCDTSEA Conference
Dear Colleagues,
We are working to make the November 30, 2018 SCDTSEA Conference at Blythewood's SCDMV as good as can be. Registration/membership forms will be emailed to you in August or September, but I hope you will reserve that date for the conference! One thing that we did want to attach for you is the poster contest information. It was sent out in January, but you may have lost the information. One new addition to this is that the teacher of the 1st winner will get $50 and a plaque. I hope that you can get some of your students to do safety posters for this contest. As always, the top three will be rewarded with cash prizes.
Thank you for supporting the DUI-E bill. Although action was not taken this year, Representative Bill Taylor will present it again next year. If you are interested in making contact, his email is bill@taylorschouse.com. In regards to this subject, a most helpful PA for your teaching would be found by going to the internet and typing in “Your Last Text Texting While Driving.”
You may want to sign up for a few mailing lists that I consider very helpful in my teaching. One is the daily fatality reports in SC. You may sign up by contacting Beth Lancaster, SC Dept. of Public Safety, at bethlancaster@scdps.gov. Another is the SC Insurance Association's daily reports. You may sign up at scinsurance.net.
Some of you have found it most helpful to have a guest speaker from the SC Department of Public Safety. In the Greenville area, Joe Hovis does a great job. I had him speak last week. His email is joelhovis@scdps.gov. If you are not close to Greenville, contact Bill Rhyne at williamrhyne@scdps.gov and he can let you know who to contact for your area. By the way, Bill will be one of the conference speakers and I have asked him to give a presentation like they would if it was at your school. Nothing complements our teaching and makes even more of a difference with the young people! In mentioning a guest speaker, I have been corresponding with Kim Conyers at State Farm and they would love to have a one of their people speak at your school talking about insurance. If that is an interest, email her at kim.conyers.gpqc@statefarm.com.
May some of the above be helpful. I have felt that we all need more help in giving the best BTW instruction for the short time that we have. It was a concern of mine when taking courses to prepare for teaching driver and traffic safety education. I attended several universities in preparing to teach driver education/driver training (Univ of SC, Univ of GA, Texas A & M, and got my Masters in Driver and Traffic Safety Education Safety Education at Appalachian State University), but felt I still needed better training for the BTW. A speaker or two at the SCDTSEA Conference will give some great tips to help us provide better BTW instruction. For now, I will share some tips from how I teach BTW. The best way to teach student skills is to start with simple before complex maneuvers. Don't be guilty of starting with parallel parking and working with students on it for hours! I start off-road to help students get used to the vehicle, starting, stopping, smooth stops, turning and judgment stops. I may be the only one who tries to have two students in the vehicle so there can also be good learning from observation (required for high school driver education courses). This helps for faster learning—of course, observation time does not count as in-car time. Then I start on-road with tracking and then scanning (defensive driving procedures). By the way, I have pre-planned routes for every type of driving. Next I select a few good blocks to practice right and left turns, curb parks and 3-Pt turns. Now I feel the students are ready for freeway, city and mountain driving. Finally, I do the most complexed maneuver of parallel parking since the students now would have the best judgment, speed control, etc. After that, I will have them drive to practice what would be on the license test. With detailed planning like this, often I have students that still have more driving time to complete the six hours of BTW! Try this procedure if you aren't and you will find that it will make a big difference!
Some of you are also coaches. A few driving quotations relating to what you also do:
“In football a safety means two points. In driving safety means your life.”
– Captain Billy Fallaw.
“In basketball your goal is to score and in driving your goal is to arrive alive.”
– Donny Harrison.
“Driving is like baseball. It's the number of times you reach home safely that counts.”
Best regards,
Joe Sabbadino
President-Elect, SCDTSEA