Temple was one of five schools out of 50 that applied from across Texas chosen to attend the Texas School Safety Center’s Youth Preparedness Camp at Texas State University.
July 5, 2017
Temple High School Criminal Justice students prepared for a number of real life rescue scenarios as the 2017 Texas School Safety Center’s Youth Preparedness Camp at Texas State University.
On June 11, the group of eight students (Ty Culp, Lillie Oliver, Julia DeWitt, Deja Garza, Braydon Richardson, Mia Ward, Destinee Collado-Johnson and Skeigh McGuigan) and their adult sponsor Dr. Keith Parker, along with four other High School organizations and a FEMA Region 6 team came ready to receive emergency response training, leadership development, and planning skills that would allow them to lead preparedness efforts in their schools and communities.
The camp ran five days, and as part of the program, youth and their adult sponsors completed a 20-hour Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training. The CERT training included classroom-based and hands-on lessons pertaining to fire safety, basic first aid, search and rescue, incident command system (ICS), and disaster psychology, among others intended to prepare youth for an emergency event.
Each group also developed a community specific action plan aimed at further preparing their local community when they returned home. The action plan is a project related to school and/or community preparedness that the youth group, with assistance from their adult sponsor, will implement in their community over the next year.
During this five-day planning process, groups developed an objective, identified what was needed to achieve that objective, defined the steps needed to complete the objective, and created a presentation to summarize the main points of their plan.
Finally, camp participants participated in leadership development activities in an effort to provide vital skills needed to address and sustain emergency preparedness in their schools and/or communities. These activities are aimed at empowering youth to lead preparedness efforts in their community.
