Pictured from L to R: Alexis Alvarado, Haylie Phinney, Officer Mackey, Angelina Alize. Photo courtesy of Cleburne High School.
Near the start of the school year, SkillsUSA lead advisor and law enforcement teacher Nathan VanRyn at Cleburne (Texas) High School discussed community service projects for the year with the students in the SkillsUSA chapter. VanRyn, a former corrections officer, raised the idea of producing bags that would hold sensory items for police officers at the Cleburne Police Department to have while on patrol in case they respond to a call where there is a child present, specifically an autistic child.
“Our school mascot is the Yellow Jacket,” says VanRyn. “So, we decided to call them the “Yellow Jacket Buddy Bags.” The students loved the idea and began researching items that would be helpful to interact with a child when there is an altercation and police enter a home. “Interacting well with the children in these situations can make such a difference in how they deal with and interpret the situation, both now and in their futures. . . especially in cases of domestic violence,” continues VanRyn.
The students decided the bags would hold noise reducing headphones, sunglasses, fidget spinners and other toys, a weighted teddy bear blanket and communication cards for non-verbal children. They created the communication card pictures in Canva, laminated them and put them together. Each card contained a picture and a word in Spanish and in English. “So, if the child struggles to talk or understand and is scared, the police can use the items to distract, calm and communicate with them,” says VanRyn. “They can point to the picture to help the officer understand how he or she is feeling and help alleviate confusion and calm emotions.”
“Sometimes the police receive numerous 911 calls from the same location and have to go back over and over again,” says VanRyn. “Every 911 call has notes and reports from that particular call at that address, so if there is a child and they use the bag and the child responds well to specific sensory item, they can put that in the notes for the next time.”
The students moved ahead with the fundraising for their program. They set up a community drive for donations, dropped donation boxes at local businesses and developed a flyer which they shared widely. The school district shared the project on social media. They also set up an Amazon list of needed items and shared the link.
All the items were collected by the end of November and the students put together a total of 21 sensory bags. Ten of the bags went to the local police station because they have up to 10 patrol cars out at a time, and the others went to the student resource officers at the local elementary schools, the middle schools and the high school.
“This service project gave me a feeling of accomplishment,” says student Alexis Alvarado. “There are not a lot of things that give you the feeling of truly making a difference, but this project did.” Student Alize Johnson continued, “I helped create the communication cards and I was so excited to explain them to the police officers. This project was very meaningful.”
“In the more than 20 years I’ve been with the Cleburne Police Department, I’ve seen a lot of useful donations,” says Officer Mackey. “This was probably the most researched, well thought out and useful donation the department has received.”
