By Todd South
Chattanooga Times Free Press
ROCK SPRING, Ga. — Some of the children know him at first sight and chirp his name as he walks in the door.
“Hey, Officer Battles,” a few of the Rock Spring Elementary fifth-graders chimed one day last week.
The students see Walker County Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Battles each week for about an hour as part of the CHAMPS program.
Choosing Healthy Activities and Promoting Safety is a schedule of 12 to 20 safety classes, formed by the Georgia Sheriffs Association and given by local sheriff’s offices to schools in their communities. Walker County was chosen as one of 34 pilot programs in 2004.
The county has since used CHAMPS in place of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program formerly taught. There are nine schools in the county that use the class created for fifth-graders.
“It offers the schools a lot more choices in what is taught,” said Carol Cobb, fifth-grade teacher at Rock Spring.
Mrs. Cobb and others say that while the program does focus on drug abuse education, there are other areas that they can touch on such as boating, gun and ATV safety.
For children of Walker County residents there’s a lot of hunting, ATV riding and other potentially dangerous things they come in contact with, so they need to know how to be safe, Mrs. Cobb said.
Last week’s class was about making choices and the resulting consequences.
Fifth-graders’ attention can wander off of a PowerPoint presentation pretty quickly, but the deputy took advantage when he saw an opportunity.
The first thing many of the students wanted to talk about was what happened to a girl who’d been hit by a car during the weekend Christmas parade.
Deputy Battles steered the conversation to choices -- the day’s CHAMPS topic. He reminded students that looking both ways before crossing the street is an important decision whenever the children are around traffic.
With the DARE program, the instructor cannot leave the topic area, a practice that’s too rigid for talking with young children, Deputy Battles said.
Copyright 2008 Chattanooga Times Free Press