Second-grade students at Elevate Academy in Caldwell invited community members to the school earlier this week to teach them what they've learned about cooking and health safety skills.
The youth performed CPR on a toddler doll, stopped the bleeding, issued an EpiPen and demonstrated food safety techniques.
Elevate Culinary Arts, Health Safety and two certified careers for youth.
Elevate Academy is a 6th-12th grade career technical charter school. In the fifth year, Students who are “at risk” or Chronic absenteeism, poor test scores, or difficult living circumstances. Students rotate between eight disciplines and eventually specialize in one discipline.
Teachers aimed this first “You Plus Me Equal Community” event to teach students about community and show them what it means to be good community partners and employees.
“If there is a stroke or a hemorrhage, our children will be able to help. [They know how] “I’m going to use an EpiPen.” Diana Mysinger, a medical teacher who has been at the school since it opened five years ago, explained.
At the event, students Carrie Kamerman and Rylea Dewitt taught infant CPR, including the number of compressions per minute, where and how deeply to press on the chest, and what to do if only one hand is available during CPR. CPR) was taught in detail. CPR.
Over the past few weeks, Carrie and Rylea have finished their school work and found a quiet place to practice their presentations. We also produced flyers to hand out to attendees.
“We love working on big projects like this,” Carrie explained. “They are really fun for us. They help us get out of our comfort zone and prepare us for the real world.”
Rylea said she invests more in projects like this than traditional school assignments. “You learn more because you work harder.”
Carrie and Rylea both want to pursue careers in the medical field. Carrie wants to be a labor and delivery nurse and Rylea wants to be an emergency medical technician (EMT). Both will earn a certification to begin their healthcare path at Elevate. They will graduate with Medical Assistant (MA) and Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA) certifications.
Students prepared for the event through core classes, created presentations and sent emails about the event in English class, analyzed statistics in math class, and studied bacteria in science class.
What English teacher Michele Bonneau loves about Elevate is the teamwork among instructors. “We have the ability to continue to work together to make sure kids get what they need,” she said.
Several parents walked around the presentation, and the faces of their children lit up as they approached the booth. Bonneau explained that she and her team called all of her parents a day in advance and invited them to come.
At Elevate, success is not about test scores, but rather about seeing students use the skills they develop in school to succeed in their adult lives. A student cannot graduate without creating a concrete ‘life plan’.
Bonneau said working with students at Elevate isn't always easy.But it's rewarding. She was amazed at the achievements her students had overcome, saying: “There are children who turn up every day despite their incredibly difficult home circumstances and it’s really cool to see what they can do.”
Mysinger also acknowledged the challenges students face in life by holding up a simple sign that reads “E+R=O” or “Events+Response=Outcome.”
“This is what we teach every day. You can come in with the worst attitude in the whole world. A terrible event could happen, so how should we respond? (That) is what creates (the results) of our time.”
Bonneau expected this event to continue in the future. “Many children had difficulties in school and for various reasons things were not easy. But overall, they all took great pride in their project. “It feels really good.”