Ike Elementary students enjoy fun first aid

Holly Phillips’ Lawton Public Schools Foundation grant was funded just in time this year.

Phillips, a third grade teacher at Eisenhower Elementary School, had already planned a FUNfirst Aid assembly for Thursday, Nov. 21. She had arranged for two RNs from Comanche County Memorial Hospital to present an assembly on the basics of first aid, but her request for more than 200 first aid kits had yet to come through. That is until 5 p.m. Tuesday when funding became available.

“This was a wish list to add to it the assembly,” Phillips said on Thursday.

Phillips said she organized the assembly and requested the first aid kits for students in third through fifth grade for personal reasons.

“Last summer I was burned in a cooking accident,” she said. “While I was recuperating, I realized we have kids who are home alone or taking care of their little brother or sister. I wondered if they would know what to do in an emergency.”

So Phillips organized the FUNfirst Aid assembly with the assistance of RNs Susan Milam and Katrina Scouten. Milam, a surgery services educator, and Scouten routinely make first aid presentations to first responders, firefighters and lifeguards. This was their first time to share the information with third through fifth graders.

Milam said the goal is to give students knowledge about what is contained in a first aid kit and what to do in an emergency.

“There is a lot of anxiety and fear,” she said of emergency situations. “We try to take away some of that. Maybe one day one of these kids will save a life.”

Students learned some first aid basics such as how to stop a nosebleed, what to do if someone has a tooth knocked out, how to treat a burn and how to remove a bee stinger.

MyKhinzee Revels, fourth grader, said she learned how to check the scene if it was a dangerous place, to call 911 if someone is bleeding and it can’t be stopped, how to clean out a wound and dress it, and how to stop a nosebleed.

“Put pressure on the nose and lean forward,” she said as she demonstrated the technique. Revels said she didn’t know any of these things before the assembly.

But the part she liked best was the CPR exercise where students practiced chest compressions on a dummy.

“It was cool and helpful,” Revels said.

Deziah Shepherd, fourth grader, agreed that the CPR exercise was the best part.

“It was hard. It was my first time pushing on something that wasn’t real,” she said with a laugh. Shepherd said she also learned how to put bandages on a wound. She said the information was useful and felt confident that she could use some of it if the need arose.

Christopher Mayorga, fifth grader, said he learned how to do CPR and what to do if someone was cut or bleeding. He also learned what to do in the event of a dog bite.

“You get a 4×4 and put on the bite,” he said as he demonstrated on his arm how to put on a bandage. “If it is bleeding through, you get another one. You get the tape and wrap the tape around it. You use the dressing thing, I forget what it was called. If that doesn’t work, you call for help.”

Mayorga said he did not know any of the first aid information before the assembly.

To drive the lesson home, students had to pass a quiz the next day about what they had learned before they received their first aid kits.