Important Lessons Learned By Kindergartners-To-Be

How many Lawrence Township residents remember going to Safety Town?

What stands out most in your memory? Was it “Officer Friendly” – a.k.a Officer Jack Maple? Or was it seeing Patch the Pony?

More than 35 years after it first started, the program is still a rite of passage for many Lawrence youngsters preparing to enter Kindergarten.

During Safety Town 2011 – held at Ben Franklin Elementary School June 20 through July 1 – 80 children learned about various aspects of safety in ways that were age-appropriate. They learned about bicycle and pedestrian safety, poisons, “stranger danger,” animal safety, swimming safety and being careful around water, wearing seat belts, being safe on the playground, and bus safety.

Highlights of the program included visits to the Lawrence Township Police Station and the Lawrenceville Fire Co. firehouse where they learned about the many duties police officers have and lessons on fire safety.  

The children were also visited by Otto the Auto from AAA and Smokey Bear. Smokey taught the children about forest fires and why it is so important not to play with matches.

The tour of the police station began in the courtroom, where Detective Dave Burns explained to the students that there are different types of police officers. “Some wear a uniform, and some don’t. They are not strangers.”

Students were given a behind-the-scenes tour, including a visit to empty jail cells, the police car garage, administrative offices, the detective bureau and the patrol division. Police Chief Daniel Posluszny visited with the students.

In addition, the students had a 20-minute lesson in CSI – Crime Scene Investigation.

“What kinds of clues do I look for?” Officer Dave Dalle Pazze asked the students.

They answered: fingerprints, footprints, and glass. He added blood to their list. Then he showed them how the detective bureau takes those clues and transforms them into the evidence needed “to get the bad guys.”

He asked the class, “What do we do with bad guys?”

“Put them in jail for a hundred years,” one student answered.

Of all the different CSI lessons demonstrated, the unanimous favorite was the plaster of Paris casting of a shoe print. Della Pazze said that is always the favorite.

The visit to the Lawrenceville firehouse was divided into three parts. Students toured the inside of a fire truck. They listened to “Flashy,” a Dalmatian robot who helped reinforce when to call 911 for help. And, in the last part, the students used a hose to try to knock out a fire – or in this case, paper cups inside a pretend building.

Lawrence Township’s Safety Town has truly come full circle. Children who were some of the earliest participants in the program are now its leaders.

Detective Scott Caloiaro, 39, can remember attending Safety Town right before he entered Kindergarten in the 1970s.

Caloiaro said the program “brings the whole community together. The instructors have gone through the program. Everyone has helped each other through the years. It has come full circle.”

Rob Radice, high school teacher and football coach, has been working with Safety Town now for 10 years. He, too, remembers attending Safety Town in the 1970s.

He credits the success of the program with the “one-on-one relationship with the Kindergarteners.”

Each Safety Town participant was paired up with a student from Lawrence Intermediate School, Lawrence Middle School or Lawrence High School - “some of which are repeat counselors.”

Burns, likewise, can recall attending Safety Town at Ben Franklin back in 1973 or 1974.

The 80 or so student counselors – ranging from those entering fifth-grade all the way up to recently-graduated high school seniors – earned community service hours for their participation. Many of them were also Safety Town alumni.

Lawrence’s Safety Town is part of the National Safety Town Center (www.nationalswafetytown.com), which was formed in 1964 by Dorothy Chlad as the first organization dedicated to safety education for preschool age children. It is now an international program in 3,500 communities in the United States and 38 countries.