First aid in fourth grade

JOLIET — A program that teaches fire safety to youngsters will be expanded to include potentially lifesaving first-aid instruction.

Fourth-graders at all schools in Joliet will be taught how to control bleeding, how to help someone who is choking, and how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The program will be administered by the Joliet Fire Department's Fire Awareness Safety Team, which for 10 years has been teaching youngsters techniques like dialing 911 and stop, drop and roll.

"Safety is a learned behavior. Educating children will create a generation of safety-minded adults," said Capt. Dave Brozman of the fire department. "It's all about prevention, and the best place to start is in the classroom."

The city's fire department and local school districts are partnering with the Save A Life Foundation to introduce the first-aid instruction program. The foundation is based in Schiller Park and was founded in 1993 by Carol Spizzirri after her 18-year-old daughter, Christina, died following a hit-and-run collision.

For more than a decade, Spizzirri's foundation has worked with legislators, police departments and other agencies to teach CPR and other first-aid measures to as many people as possible.

Trained paramedics didn't arrive in time to save Spizzirri's daughter, but police and bystanders might have been able to save Christina's life, she said.

"The police were the first to arrive on the scene, but they didn't know what to do and she bled to death," Spizzirri told students Friday at Cunningham Elementary School in Joliet.

She was there to unveil the program, along with U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Morris, who secured $600,000 in federal funding to cover the costs of printing literature, purchasing mannequins and other aspects of the program.

"In Congress, we're asked to do a lot of things. This was an easy sell. We hope to expand it nationwide," Weller told the youngsters. "Young people are going to benefit from this. That's why it's so important."

The program started in Chicago Public Schools and has spread to other parts of Illinois and to Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania, Spizzirri said.

The first-aid techniques will be taught to nearly 2,500 students a year in 87 fourth-grade classrooms at 30 elementary schools in Joliet, both public and private, Brozman said. Superintendents from the Joliet, Troy and Plainfield school districts visited Cunningham for Friday's announcement.

Spizzirri's partners in the Safe A Life Foundation include Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, 85, who developed the maneuver credited with saving the lives of thousands of choking victims, and included the late Dr. Peter Safar, who developed the CPR procedure and who died in 2003.

Reporter Ted Slowik can be reached at (815) 729-6053 or via e-mail at tslowik@scn1.com.