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We visit EP Children's home
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The Word is Spreading…..
When you meet students or schools for the first time you never quite know what to expect. You don’t know how disciplined they are, what their attention span is like or who the disruptive ones might be. It is always my biggest challenge to get the attention of the kids in such a way that they forget about being disruptive or naughty…
One of the places I visited in May was the EP Children’s Home. This home caters for children that have been removed from their homes by court order and placed into the care of the Home.
They range in age from 4 to 18 year old. I was a bit nervous about the older groups, some of them were sizing me up and had an attitude written all over their faces.
The day of the lecture I had been on duty at a Sea Rescue callout for a drowning in progress at Brighton Beach in PE. We had initiated CPR on a young male who had gone swimming in his jeans and drowned. CPR continued for just over an hour on this young man and eventually the paramedics took over. Unfortunately he didn’t pull through.
So I was 5 minutes late for the WaterWise workshop. The 14 -18 year old boys were waiting in the hall for me. Some had that look of “why on earth do we need to be here…” I had made a point of not cleaning the sea sand off my shorts and legs. Before I started I sat on the stage and dropped my head for a minute. One of the kids at the back shouted….”Hey!. What are you doing?” I looked up and said to the whole class. “Take a look at my legs and shorts… What do you see?” None of them were quite sure what to answer as it was a strange question. And then I began….
“My knees and clothes are full of sea sand. My name is Marcus and I am a volunteer at Sea Rescue. I am here to teach you about water safety, about what to do, and not to do at dams, rivers and most importantly, the sea… I have just been at Brighton Beach which is where most of you guys go and swim. I have just pulled out a young man who went swimming in his jeans and drowned. I have been doing CPR on him for an hour…. He never made it.”
“Now… you can either pay attention to what I am about to teach you, or you could end up being the next person I pull out of the water…”
It might have been a harsh way to start with these guys but I felt at the time it was the best way to get their attention. I could have heard a pin drop in that hall. I had every single kid’s undivided attention for a full hour. They were 100% involved in the entire lecture and when questions were asked answers were given by everyone and in abundance. It was one of the most satisfying lectures I have ever given. When it came to giving them a chance to practice on the CPR dummy themselves, they all wanted a chance and I felt it was the right day to let them all have a go. The lecture went on a bit longer than usual but everyone got involved and they had a great time.
At the end of the lecture the oldest boy came up to me and said that if he is ever on the beach, he wants to know that I am close by to help if there is any trouble.
That really touched me that this rough looking boy, wanted to know that I would be close by to lend a helping hand.
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