Safety School!

Hello Everybody! I've had quite the first week of 2009! I have been at safety school all week to get my Lifeguard Instructor (LGI) certification. With this certification I can teach an certify lifeguard training classes, cpr and aed for the profressional rescuer classes, oxygen administration classes, and guard start classes. For the past 8 months my boss has been preparing me for this LGI class by having me help out in cpr/aed classes. I have really enjoyed it and am excited about receiving my certification! My LGI class has been really intense, but so much fun at the same time. We are all given teaching assignments to learn how to teach to a class. Yesterday I tought passive submerged rescue, which is where you have to go down to the bottom of the pool and bring a victim up to the surface. It has always been my hardest skill since I took my lifeguard class 5 years ago, but teaching it really was not bad! It wasn't as scary to teach as I thought it would be! Today I had the assignment to teach adult CPR, rescue breathing, and conscious and unconscious choking. I love teaching CPR, so I was really excited about getting this skill. Let me tell you about the coolest part of my lesson today: When you are doing CPR, your chest compression rate needs to be at a rate of 100 per minute. What this means is that if you do straight compressions for one whole minute, you should get in exactly 100 compressions. There is a myth going around that if you do compressions to the beat of the song "Stayin' Alive," you will get exactly 100. I tried this out a few months ago, and found it to be true! So, during my class today, I had another student in my class do straight compressions on a manicin, while I played the song on my ipod speakers. Everyone was supposed to count compressions for a minute, but they were all laughing way too hard! One of the trainers teaching us ran out the door to the water safey instructor training class next door to the the head of American Red Cross Health and Safety courses, to come an watch. It was a hit! But now, I can't get the dang song out of my head!

One of the craziest parts of this class has been how I have pretty much been living with 2 of my bosses and 2 of my coworkers this entire week. Our class is from 9:00am to usually 5:00pm each day. We all car pool together, because Safety School is being held at the South Davis Rec center. It's been like a whole week vacation. Tomorrow is the last day of safety school, and because of all the time I've spent with my 2 bosses and coworkers, its going to be really strange to be away from them.

Long story short, LGI is way cool, and thanks to my boss for getting me into the class!