Windsor Middle School has several community partners that work with us throughout the year in order to keep our students and staff safe, including Community Matters, Alliance Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, Safe Routes to School and the American Heart Association.
For three years, WMS has worked with Community Matters to implement a program called Safe School Ambassadors. Community Matters describes the program as the nation’s most effective bystander education program to harness the power of students to prevent and stop bullying. At WMS, between 50 and 100 students are specially trained to use positive peer pressure to reduce the number of students who are bullying or are feeling isolated.
Our partners at Alliance Medical and Kaiser Permanente provide specialized instruction to our students in the area of family life and human reproduction. Specifically, Kaiser Permanente puts on a dramatic presentation entitled “Nightmare on Puberty Street” that teaches children how to overcome negative peer pressure, cope with depression and the importance of seeking help from a trusted adult when going through a stressful or difficult situation.
Many of our students walk and ride their bikes to school. Our relationship with Safe Routes to School aims to make it safer for students by working with transportation, public health and planning professionals to plan out the safest routes for students to travel from home to school.
On Tuesday, Jan. 30 Stacey Gibbons and Jenny Roberts from the American Heart Association presented three CPR school kits to physical education teachers Heather Mumby and Penny Nichols during the seventh grade assembly. Additionally, former teacher Steve Griffith shared his story about how receiving CPR from his teenage son saved his life when he had a massive heart attack.
On Friday, Feb. 2 hundreds of students and staff came to school wearing red to show their support and to raise awareness. The symbol of this movement is the red dress because heart disease is the number one killer of women in America.
The three CPR school kits will be used in our seventh grade PE unit that is done with Windsor Fire Department, where we teach every seventh grader about hands-only CPR. With the hundreds of students who go through the program every year someone’s life may be saved directly from what students learn at WMS.
We at WMS would like to thank our partners as we work together to make our school and community a safer place.
Brian Williams is the principal of Windsor Middle School
