The other thread about the school film brought this thread idea to mind.

I think that for most, they don't do a heck of a lot.

In my school, I was really impacted by a couple with HIV who came to speak to our school. I was 16 and still a virgin, and it really did make me want to wait to have sex and to be careful when I did.

But, most of the other presentations and movies did not have a big impact on any of us.

None that happened at school that I can remember, but admittedly I used to watch those PBS teen shows and they'd have the PSA episodes. I think the first time I learned about Ryan White was while watching one of them.

Yeah - there were a few. When I was in high school, a man came to our school and shared the story of his family's experience with a drunk driver. They were coming home from a family vacation when they were hit. One daughter died at the scene and the second was seriously injured and almost died. The third daughter was injured, but not seriously. He ended up in tears by the end, along with a whole bunch of us girls. That made a pretty big impact, but it wasn't really the kind of thing I was into, anyway. I was really into sports and dancing and wasn't into drinking.

I remember "The Ran White Story", too. That made a big impact on me.

One show that really impacted me while growing up was the Degrassi series. I was a big younger than the kids on Degrassi Jr. High and Degrassi High, but I really remember the serious and the issues they dealt with - teen pregnancy, drugs, adoption, children with special needs, and so on.

TSJ, That sounds like a dd story that would have impact. I think life person panel means more than any movie presentation.

Nope but then again I never really needed them.

Well I didn't have those things in school and I never really caught a lot of them on TV. One that did kind of have an effect on me, I saw on a video rental when I was a teenager. I had rented Fright Night II and before the movie starts it shows a person's nose and it says for oh so many grams of crack cocaine, you could buy a stereo, a car, this, that, the other, and shows all of these things going up the nose to show what you're snorting away when you buy drugs.

Another anti-drug ad, also on that tape I think, all these teenagers are climbing the high dive ladder at the pool and diving in, when it gets the last one it asks something of 'just because everybody else does it, is it a good idea?' and shows the swimming pool is empty. Kind of corny but in the inital moment it was kind of 'whoaaaa'.

RedBedroom wrote:

TSJ, That sounds like a dd story that would have impact. I think life person panel means more than any movie presentation.

Yeah - it was really powerful! Our school had about 1500 students and this man had almost total silence during the whole presentation, which rarely happens. Even afterwards, when we were all dismissed, most of us walked out in total silence, and it was lunch time. Schools are almost never silent at lunch.

I remember watching Schindler's List in high school and that made a huge impact. We'd gone with out history class and a whole bunch of other classes - special screenings for school groups. That was another time when we walked out in total silence, and it was a theatre full of high school kids and their teachers.