NORTHAMPTON — Ellen Kennedy teaches her JFK Middle School students that they are capable of saving the day, a pursuit which has gotten her the title of 2016 Fire and Life Safety Educator of the Year from the state Department of Fire Services.
Kennedy was previously a paramedic in Northampton, but her shift in career path led her to become an eighth grade science teacher at the middle school 15 years ago. She now incorporates safety lessons into her curriculum, and they act as an underlying theme in nearly everything she teaches.
“I’m teaching them that you can be the person that saves your family,” said Kennedy.
Kennedy teaches her students the importance of having a family escape plan, the harmful effects of smoke and drugs on the body, how to treat burns, the basics of being a firefighter and how to detect what started a fire.
She works alongside the state-funded Student Awareness of Fire Education (S.A.F.E.) program, which is a state initiative to provide resources to local fire departments to conduct fire and life safety education programs in grades K-12.
The teacher said she was stunned upon learning she won the award, considering she was up against individuals who laid the groundwork for the SAFE program.
Kennedy said she couldn’t have earned the award without the support of superintendent John A. Provost, who she said is pro-fire safety. She also said she received support from the chiefs of the police and fire departments.
“They have faith in me, and it definitely makes things easier,” she said.
Northampton firefighter Natalie Stollmeyer is the fire department’s SAFE coordinator and has worked as a team with Kennedy to educate the students.
“I think Ellen’s nomination is long overdue. Northampton SAFE program has been lacking in its area of fulfilling our SAFE obligations, and Ellen took that — without any direction from us — and ran with it,” she said.
Stollmeyer and Kennedy agreed that the Northampton program is effective because of their teamwork. They emphasized that an educator and a teacher are very different things, and that being a duo has maximized their impact.
Kennedy said she veered away from being a paramedic because she developed Multiple Sclerosis and her body could not handle the responsibilities of the job.
On top of that, she said the trauma she witnessed began to catch up with her. Teaching became an opportunity to save future individuals, which was a means to cope with not being able to save everyone in the past, she said.
“It’s one of the reasons I wanted to go into teaching because I thought: here’s one of the things I can do to help…. It was a way for me to exercise some of my ghosts, and also hope that there won’t be anymore ghosts. If over half of my students take away the things I teach them, then things will be more safe,” Kennedy said.
Now, she empowers her students through the safety lessons she teaches.
In addition to her curriculum, the science teacher and the fire department host a Fire Day annually. Kennedy’s eighth graders get to participate in an egg drop from the fire truck ladder, experiment with water pressure from the fire hose, meet accelerant detection dogs and learn about burn trauma.
She also has her students send in submissions every year to the Arson Watch Reward Program’s poster contest. Kennedy pointed out, with pride and a smile, that many first and second place winners have come from her classroom.
She said her time as a teacher has shown her that people underestimate teenagers and focus on trying to protect them from harm rather than inform them of dangers that they might face.
According to Stollmeyer, the program strives to teach things to children that they will take home to their parents.
To her, kids can act as catalysts for safety precautions in the home.
“It’s the things that parents should be doing, but they don’t,” she said.