Paine Intermediate club readies students for crises

Though Paine Intermediate third-, fourth- and fifth-graders aren’t old enough to remember the World Trade Center attacks of 2001, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, they still need to know how to survive natural and manmade disasters.

Local attorney and retired Army Lt. Col. Scott Hughes has been educating the school’s Survival and Emergency Preparedness Club on this topic for five years.

Serving 27 years of active and reserve duty, Hughes’s activities for these students parallel what he learned while in the Army and through his personal experiences. He shows the kids things they can do to be prepared to react to, and withstand, a crisis of any sort.

“I did similar type work as part of my responsibilities in the Army,” he said. “I was involved in several natural and manmade disaster-type events and was in command of soldiers.”

He instructs the students on basic self-defense and survival skills, first aid and hands-on activities, such as building a water filter out of readily attainable items and learning how to find water in your home in case you can’t use the tap. Students also learn how to arrange rendezvous points with their family in case they are forced to leave home, study the weather by looking at the clouds and talk about having a general respect for authority, which can be valuable during a crisis and in everyday life.

The general theme of each semester is “don’t panic during a crisis,” Hughes said.

Fifth-grader Hunter Osborne, 11, has participated in the club for one semester, and said the main theme of staying calm really helped his group learn how to deal with life-threatening injuries. 

“He taught us how to stay alive,” Osborne said. “He taught us how to make a cup out of duct tape and how to purify water.”

Osborne said one of his favorite activities was when the group ventured outdoors and learned how to make fire out of dryer lint. 

“Dryer lint spreads fire faster and it makes a big fire so you can stay warm,” he said. “My other favorite activity was when we went outside to the field and were given different jobs. There were some first responders and some of the students would be given a certain injury, a ‘fake injury,’ and we would take care of them,” Osborne said.

The simulation activity helped students learn how to deal with an injured person  — assessing his or her injury and even showing how a surgeon would behave while operating. Then, the students would switch jobs. 

“The purpose of that activity was to teach us about first responders and what they do,” Osborne said.

“It also taught us how to do this if we ever had to respond to an emergency.”

The club’s membership varies by semester, but Hughes has anywhere from 15 to 30 students per grade, and the club meets every two weeks.

“I enjoy doing this because of the interaction with the kids,” Hughes said. “I’ve coached youth sports for several years as well, so I know a lot of the kids from the community. I also do this because, God forbid something does happen, maybe something I’ve told them will click.”

As a father of three, Hughes said he knows clubs often need to be fun, too, to keep the kids engaged. Sometimes a classic game of hangman is on the board during classroom time, so they can learn important words. However, as one would expect, teaching many students of differing ages can be challenging. When this happens, he reverts to his military days.

“If things get too out of sorts, we do pushups or imaginary chairs,” Hughes said. 

Imaginary chair pose, also called a “wall sit” in the fitness world, is an exercise done to strengthen the quadriceps muscles. 

Not just working with kids, Hughes has also consulted with businesses about emergency skills, creating workshops for their employees and has completed extensive coursework through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.