First Aid is Common Sense

Students from Brock HS learn how they can help during an emergency

Brock High School hosted their first-ever Workplace Safety and Emergency Response Blitz on September 23. The event also helped to raise awareness for the Durham District School Board’s (DDSB) Safety Week. Grade 9 Technological Education students gathered in teams and rotated through various simulated workplace injury scenarios that required them to take action during staged “emergencies”. A total of 85 students participated in the Blitz, which included 20 seniors from the Drama class.

Safe Schools Program Facilitator Holly Richard co-organized the day for the students and she told them that first aid is common sense, and that it’s good to have an awareness of what to do during a life-changing situation.

“As Grade 9 students, they are on the cusp of joining the workforce, so this event was designed to underscore the importance of workplace safety,” Richard says. “This was also an opportunity to empower young people with knowledge and skills that I believe to be universally important. Quite simply, you never know when you may need to respond to an emergency situation.”

Miller Goard participated in the Blitz and he is also an aspiring police officer. He took the exercises very seriously and loved that his school was hosting this event and he hopes to see more Safety Blitz events in the future.

“I liked the car crash, because it’s an actual example of something that can happen out there in the real world at any given time,” Goard says. “And since I’m going to be a cop, I’m going to have to deal with things.”

There were six scenarios set up in locations throughout the school. Student actors made the scenes as realistic as possible using props and make-up. For example, the actors simulated a car accident, they created an altercation between students, an actor drank a “poisonous” substance and another had his hand “severed” in the woodshop.

Richards said, “We felt it was important to design scenarios that were exciting, realistic, relatively common, and challenging enough to require effective problem-solving, cooperation and communication within responder groups.”

The student groups were evaluated on their methods in dealing with the emergency situations. Afterwards they discussed what they did and were given examples of how they could’ve improved.

Richards mentioned that she is hoping that this event is first of many across the DDSB. She encourages administrators who are interested in hosting an event at their school to contact her.