Sara Strawhun teaching a fire safety presentation to students.

This is my first year working for the American Red Cross in St. Louis. I work in the Youth Services department in which we have the unique opportunity to travel all over the area into various classrooms giving presentations on health, safety and disaster preparedness topics. It’s an exciting job where each day offers a different story or experience.

Just yesterday I visited a school nearly as far out on 270 South as you can go without heading over the bridge into Illinois. As I walked into the classroom of about 60 1^st graders, they all nearly simultaneously screamed “Miss Sara” as if it had been planned. I’ve visited their classrooms about 6 or 7 times now and have nearly exhausted the presentation options. Not only do I get the opportunity to teach the students life saving strategies and ways to live healthfully but also generate a positive impression and perception of the American Red Cross from a very young age. I always start each presentation with 2 questions: 1) Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Red Cross and 2) What kinds of things do you think the Red Cross does? I always hear a very wide variety of answers; sometimes I even have to try my very hardest not to laugh out loud at the randomocity of what can be said. However, I always correct any misconceptions, compliment the accuracies and give an enthusiastic summary of our many duties.

I feel like this 60 second interaction is nearly (not quite) but nearly as important as the 30 min presentation I give afterward. For these interactions familiarize the students with the Red Cross mission and also give a face to the name of such a large organization. The students in the schools we visit know us, like us and look forward to our visits. Almost too much sometimes as I felt one day when I visited a classroom and a young girl turned to me and said, “I wish you could be our every-day teacher.” Because they are familiarized with the Red Cross at such a young age, maybe one day some of these students will become one of our loyal volunteers, generous donors or even a hard-working staff member. Last year we reached over 90% of the districts in St. Louis, went into 173 schools and taught over 73,000 students. Hopefully each of those students not only takes away the important knowledge they learn during our presentation but also take away a lasting memory of that nice “Red Cross Lady” that used to visit their class and how that must have meant the American Red Cross truly cared about their well-being.

Sara

Sara Strawhun is the Ready Rating School Associate for the American Red Cross St. Louis Area Chapter.