Weather Channel brings Project Safeside to students
Tampa Bay Business Journal - by Jane Meinhardt Staff Writer
Courtesy of The Weather Channel, Tampa Bay area middle and high school students will get acquainted with severe weather before summer vacation.
Project Safeside is designed as part of the science curriculum in schools or a supplement to earth-science courses. The program, created and supplied by The Weather Channel, helps educate students about safety measures for hurricanes and other weather-related dangers.
And it is free to public school districts along Florida's west coast.
"We're committed to getting this in place in coastal areas," said Bay Proby, the project's coordinator. "We've had no one turn us down, and we have yet to find any school system with a severe weather preparedness curriculum."
The project was introduced last year to about 250 middle and high schools along Florida's east coast. About 300,000 students received instructions.
Teachers receive project kits from The Weather Channel. The kit contains a teachers' resource guide, a video, weather maps, hurricane preparedness pamphlets, posters and disaster plan brochures for the home.
Carolyn Jones, education marketing manager at The Weather Channel in Atlanta, declined to reveal the cost of the program. It is part of The Weather Channel's community initiative and marketing and sales activities, she said.
In addition to more familiar severe weather such as hurricanes and tornadoes, the 10-hour curriculum includes instruction about wild fires, a weather-related phenomenon that has become more prevalent as Florida's severe drought continues. Safety measures for lightning are also an element of the project.
An optional part is a hurricane simulation designed to develop critical thinking skills and to teach students how to work in teams.
Students in the exercise form cities and elect officials. As the hypothetical "Hurricane Jason" approaches, students plan disaster recovery and support functions they then enact, Proby said.
"This curriculum is applicable anytime, but mostly it's taught the last month of school just before hurricane season," he said. "It covers any weather that affects your area."
To reach Jane Meinhardt, call (727) 507-0663, or send your e-mail to jmeinhardt@bizjournals.com.
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