The Scene is Safe...to learn CPR!

This week we had Victoria teach CPR to the classes.  The main ages that she taught were the 5th through 7th grades because the older kids had learned the basic CPR training already.  This class will get them an honor, however they will not be certified to do CPR.  The class is just so they will have a general idea of how to save a life and that they can help a person who is having heart or brain problems that have fainted or to people who are choking.  I do not have my camera with me right now but I will be posting some pictures later when I have my camera available.  The basic things they did were the 30 chest  compressions and 2 breaths, and the abdominal thrust for a person who is choking.  Their favorite part was trying to wake the victim and the AED because they thought the shock to get the heart rhythm back to normal was cool.  Overall an eventful meeting.  Hopefully, if these students are in a situation that calls for CPR, they will remember what they have learned and save a life.  Next week there will be no meeting. We will resume on the 1st of December.

In other news, I went to Wofford Library yesterday to do some more research on my paper topic and to find statistics.  I spoke with the research librarian and she directed me to an electronic education journal that had some good information...but I could not get on it because I am not a student.  I did find a couple of books that had several case studies of whether single-sex classes are effective and the results were exactly what I needed to prove that they are not helpful at all.  So I will be adding the information to the paper and hopefully I can finish it soon.

Final Night of Class Work

Last night was actually the last night of classwork for the classes.  This basically means that we have fulfilled the requirements for them to move up a level in status, and now we can start on the honors.  As for my class we finished one honor already.  The Chemistry honor was a big hit with the kids.  Even though they did not think they would have fun, they did.  Last night we looked at how ice lowers the freezing point (fancy words for it makes the ice freeze at a lower temp.) and the reasons that this happens.  The science experiment last night was actually making ice cream in a ziplock bag.  We used the salt to lower the freezing point of the ice which made it colder, which in turn froze the mixture to make the ice cream.  Overall they had fun and it was a great end to the class.  Now I will be moving on to teaching honors to all ages of the group, but mostly the 8th through 11th graders.  We will be having a staff meeting to discuss the honors that we will be teaching soon.  I will begin teaching the honors after the Thanksgiving holiday.    I will be putting up more pictures up as I teach the honors.  Next week everyone will be learning CPR and they will continue after the holiday.

(Below is a picture of their Class A uniform with the honors on a sash). It is just a diagram but this is what the uniforms look like.  The oval like things on the sash are called Honors that each Pathfinder earns.

Starting of a new honor

This week I started to teach the Chemistry Honor for the class.  At first they did not like the honor (because they did not know that SOME, and I stress the word some, aspects of chemistry can be fun), however they started to have fun when we did one of the science experiments.  We did the experiment with the pepper in the water.  Basically it is pepper in water and I put some dish soap into the water and the pepper moved away from the spot where the pepper was. Hard to explain but a good example of density and other aspects of chem.  Anyways we have one more night and it should be finished!  After this honor I will teach other honors for all ages of the club, but probably more to the older kids.  Overall an eventful week for my project. On another note, homework has slowed down slightly however it is speeding back up again. But the project and homework are getting done so that is good.