Brigham Young University professor Paul Coon's student teachers could easily qualify as modern-day heroes.

They tackle a job each day fraught with peril and fringed in danger. They're fearless and strong.They're teaching foreign students how to drive. Along the way, they're getting a practical education themselves.

And although those signed up for driver's education are among some of the best-motivated and well-intentioned in the student body, they are also students who haven't grown up with the American mobile way of life or even with driving on the right side of the road.

"It's a job that gets the blood flowing," said Ryan Olson, a math-education major earning methodology credits this semester by helping to instruct the 21 students who want to learn to drive.

Fifteen countries are represented, including Bulgaria, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Germany, Palestine and India.

Coon said it isn't unusual to have an entire class of students who've never had a car in their family.

"In other countries, it isn't like in America. In Japan, for instance, you have to prove you have a place to park it before you can have a car. A license costs between $500 and $3,000.

"Many countries really don't want their citizens to drive. They make it very difficult to get a license. In America, we take it for granted."

A Utah driver's license for a foreign student becomes a ticket to driving freedom in his own country. After he gets the state license, he can apply for an international license.

So for students like Clarissa Blackmer from Belgium and Viktoria Larson from Sweden, the 10- to 12-week class is among the most important courses of the semester.

They pay strict attention to the lectures on sign recognition and road etiquette, read the text of the Utah Driver's Handbook with meticulous care and watch their fellow drivers with interest.

"There's lots more traffic here," said Larson. "In Sweden we have so much more public transportation."

"It's real good (to take this class)" said Suzette Thatcher from Hong Kong, " 'cause driving on the right side is hard to get used to. I still have to tell myself, stay on the right! And no one signals and people drive kind of fast here."

Parking is real hard, said Jeunghwa Kim of Korea. "The scary thing is the left turn. There's lots of cars coming . . . but the road is quite wide so it's all right.

"For someone to not give a signal is the problem."

Misook Jo, also Korean, said she's scared of driving on the freeway because it's so fast.

Jo doesn't speak fluent English so she has a little harder time than some, Coon said. However, foreign students can usually take the Department of Motor Vehicles' written driving test in their language and can bring a translator if they wish, he said.

Some students, like those from Asian countries, adapt more quickly than others. Students from less-developed countries naturally have more of a challenge, he said.

Coon takes great pride in the quality of the driver education and training program. He feels it's unique in what it offers both students and student teachers.

"These teachers have told me it's the greatest experience they've ever had. They get to take somebody from ground zero in each of the teaching domains and get them through to graduate school, getting their license! Tell me one other class where you can do that and watch it happen."

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Coon said teaching driver's education also gives the instructors extra money, a boost that may well make the difference for a teacher in being able to stay in education later on. The driver's ed course at BYU costs $130 and requires a student to attend 18 hours of classroom instruction, log eight hours behind the wheel, and pass a written exam with an 80 percent.

"If your teacher still has to brake for you, steer for you, well, at least you know where to put the key now," said Coon. "But we may ask you to take it again."

About 10 percent of his students do that. One student, an elderly woman who bounced from curb to curb during her driving time, never did pass. Others retake the course.

Those who do are pleased with themselves and become drivers who understand the privilege they've won, said Coon. "It means as much to them as a college degree. It's a license to great opportunity."

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