Michigan's AmeriCorps Member Council - Posting #25

Greetings, this is Josh from the Together We Prepare AmeriCorps program.

As many of you know from my first post, I am a little awkward, maybe a tad long-winded, and at this point I wouldn't put it past you to think I am a little strange (after all who opens a blog post by taking self deprecating shots at themselves?). But alas, we're both in this together; I have to write this and, much to your chagrin, you're still reading.

Never you fret, I am not going to go into a long august bombastic narrative about A Safe Community Begins with You, which would just be rude. I am however, going to take the time to give you a long robust description of our newest program, Basic Aid Training for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities.

A fellow AmeriCorps member and I have had the distinct privilege of creating and implementing another program that, when coupled with A Safe Community Begins with You, aims to provide the necessary skills requisite for independent living. This program mirrors the pedagogical concepts of A Safe Community Begins with You in that it is fundamentally interactive. Participants go through eight different stations; CPR, abdominal thrusts, slings, splints, minor cuts and wounds, kitchen safety, check/call/care, and finally first aid kit reviews. You may be wondering what “abdominal thrusts” are (as did I when I first heard this artless amalgamation of words)? Abdominal thrusts are the new Heimlich maneuver - much like periwinkle is the new salmon.

Onto the narrative portion – the great heartfelt touching story you have come to this blog to hear. Two weeks ago we ran our first class with our original focus group. We have grown very close with this group of students because we have interacted with them quite a bit through our first class as well as follow up lunches. Needless to say, both parties involved were quite excited about this class. As instructors we could not wait to see if all our efforts would pay off while the students were looking forward to a day outside of class with the added bonus of seeing us. For anonymities sake I am going to call one of the students “Jed.” As the class proceeded Jed became more and more interested in the material so much that during the splint exercise he was able help other students create a splint without any extra help. Jed is well above the chronological age of eighteen; however, he functions at the cogitative level of a second or third grader varying on the task at hand.

It was amazing to see him master a skill so readily to the point that he was able to not only reproduce the skill on command, but also instruct others how to master the skill.