WARSAW — Edgewood Middle School has been selected to be featured as a “Cool School” feature.

Edgewood has been engaging students in life saving skills every Friday for the past month during their lunch time. Warsaw Police Department, Warsaw-Wayne Fire and Lutheran EMS all partnered together to teach the students skills, varying from AED use and CPR to how to move an unconscious body, to increase student safety.

“We wanted these kids to have some life saving skills…skills that might make a difference for someone else or themselves,” stated Edgewood principal Joella Smyth. “We started with a ‘click-it’ challenge, because the number one cause of deaths in middle school aged kids is them not wearing a seatbelt.”

The “click-it” challenge has kids get into every seat in a vehicle, fasten their seatbelt and raise their hands before moving to the next seat. The idea is to encourage kids to use their seatbelts by proving it does not take a long time to put on.

The program also focused on Halloween safety. Several years ago Smyth’s own daughter’s Halloween costume caught on fire when she stood to close to a lantern while Smyth took her photo. Stop, drop and roll saved her life.

Smyth thanked Student Resource Officer Roy Navarro for coordinating the programs and producing videos to get kids involved. “[Navarro] has so much energy and he’s put in a lot of effort with these kids,” commented Smyth.

When the life saving skills program started, Smyth submitted the idea to ABC57 to be considered for the network’s “Cool School” feature. To Smyth’s excitement, Edgewood was picked to be part of it.

“I’m so excited,” boasted Smyth, “I think this is really cool. This isn’t just about our school, we have the whole community involved with the kids and they are learning great life skills, it is such a cool thing.”

On Wednesday, Nov. 16, the middle schoolers put to the test all the skills they had learned by doing a relay race. Teams of 10 lined up to do CPR and AED usage, stop, drop and roll and properly using a fire extinguisher, as well as ending with the click-it challenge. Prizes donated from places in the community were given to the winning team.

Students that did not participate in the relay race were given a scavenger hunt that required them to talk to the officers, EMTs and firefighters to answer questions.