Huffman senior Justin Erwin is certain he’ll someday use the emergency response skills he’s learned in the Teen Community Emergency Response Team program. The program is coordinated at his school by Harris County Department of Education’s Center for Safe and Secure Schools.
“It’s just good to know in case something happens-like a car accident-you never know,” said Erwin, captain of the Junior ROTC Army program at Hargrave High in Huffman.
Teens from Hargrave demonstrated their skills in fire suppression, incident command, search and rescue, cribbing and scene size-up at the Harris County Citizen Corps’ Community Emergency Response Team Rodeo 2009 along with a dozen adult CERT teams on Feb. 7. HCDE’s Center for Safe and Secure Schools coordinates the program called Teen Community Emergency Response Team, or Teen CERT, with the Harris County Citizens Corp to empower teens as first responders for community emergencies.
The competition held at the Harris County Fire and Sheriff’s Training Center in Humble allowed the teens to demonstrate what they’ve learned in 30 hours of emergency response classes during school and in after-school programs, said Rosie Flores, coordinator for Teen CERT for Harris County Department of Education.
Teen CERT instructor and Hargrave ROTC Army First Sergeant Terry Vaughn says the program allows teens to act as first responders in their community. Vaughn says Teen CERT-now in its third year at Hargrave-helps his students develop leadership skills. It could also prove to be an asset in a rural community like Huffman at scenes like car wrecks and natural disasters like Hurricane Ike.
Educators give a thumbs-up to the Teen CERT program because it helps students develop critical thinking skills as they take on real-world issues. The CERT curriculum is correlated to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for math, English/language arts, social studies, science and technology applications.
Teen CERT is currently seeking funding for the 2009-2010 school year.
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Center for Safe and Secure Schools February 2008 Press Release
