Seniors Can Save

How This Month’s Two-Part Boot Camp Session Prepared Seniors for the Future

Photo by Sara Mnookin/Maclay Andalusian

The 2023-2024 school year has flown by, and while the seniors may be counting down the days till graduation, they still have a lot to learn before entering the real world. Luckily, Maclay faculty members came up with a solution to teach young adults valuable life lessons through an annual workshop: Senior Boot Camp. The boot camp was designed around four years ago by Director of upper school Charles Beamer and history teacher Stephanie Amidon to round out the senior’s education moving forward.

“We try to tackle topics that some of y’all [seniors] may learn at home, and others may not,” Amidon said. “Some things are big and important legal issue types of things; others are changing flat tires and how to do stuff with your car. [While these] are really important types of ideas, [this boot camp is also about] enjoying and saving your last semester here at Maclay. [It’s important for seniors to] reflect on their time and how to make the most of their last six months at home.”

On Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, the first session of this two-part boot camp was held in Langford Hall during students’ FLEX period. There, all senior students filled the area as nurse Megan Snow enlightened them with an overview of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training, how to recognize cardiac arrest and other emergency care tactics that are beneficial for 17-18-year-olds to understand and perform. The first part of Senior Boot Camp was the lecture portion and introduced the students to what they needed to know for the followup session of the workshop.

“CPR training is one of those things that I feel that every adult needs to know,” Snow said. “Especially with you guys going off into college, things happen. It does take an EMS awhile to get to you so there’s lots of life saving things you can do to possibly save your friend, family member or just a stranger.”

In the upcoming weeks, homerooms will be grouped together to learn the hands-on portion of the camp, getting more one-on-one experience with these topics. There will be a total of four sessions of the second part of the boot camp, which will all take place during FLEX, through Nov. 8-15 with a make-up session on Nov. 17.

The first of four second sessions occurred on Wednesday, Nov. 8, with Joe Kupiszewski’s and Jessica Kerner’s homerooms reporting to room A3 during FLEX. From there, the seniors paired off into groups and began the active participation portion of the bootcamp. The workshop consisted of the seniors getting real life experience of going through scenarios where the students would have to act out what to do if an individual were to fall unconscious and need CPR with an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) use. Afterward, students were also taught first aid lessons and were informed on what to do if someone close by had a severe bleeding injury.

After successfully completing these two workshops, the seniors will officially be CPR and first aid certified.

“I felt like it [the Senior Bootcamp] was informational and it could be used in day-to-day society if someone did fall [we would then be prepared on how to handle the situation],” senior Abbi Sherman said.