Nauset Middle Schoolers Take Part In Emergency Response Training

ORLEANS – Inside the gymnasium of Nauset Regional Middle School last week, Julie Flanagan was laid out on the floor in pain with a serious injury to her leg. Fortunately for her, seventh grader Brendan Caton was there and ready to help.

Caton applied a tourniquet to the wound to apply pressure and stop the bleeding while Aaron Cestaro looked on, giving him instruction. Cestaro, an Eastham resident and U.S. Army Special Ops veteran, provided real-life emergency training for the middle school’s sixth, seventh and eighth graders April 8 through his company, Compound Initiatives.

“I’d say they handle it better than a lot of adults,” he said. “And because we’re introducing these concepts earlier, we’re creating more resilient adults.”

Flanagan and Jodi Kelly, the middle school’s health teachers, as well as this reporter, participated in reenactments in which students, broken into groups with designated leaders, were charged with assessing each situation and reacting to the problem. Among the real-life scenarios put before students were injuries from explosions, falls, and even saw and gunshot wounds. And, sparing no details, there was also a generous amount of fake blood.

“The sixth graders were very compassionate,” Flanagan said. “They were holding my hand, telling me to breathe.”

Kelly said that the scenario-based training complements regular in-class chest compression and stop the bleed training that students receive through the Orleans Fire Department. Last week’s training, she said, allowed students to advance those concepts and apply them outside of the classroom.

“I think they love the hands-on practice,” she said. “Some of them rise to the occasion of communicating and jumping in. In the classroom, they may not do it that way.”

Students at each grade level participated in the emergency training in 50 minute blocks. Sessions began with students running to get their heart rate up, followed by breathing exercises to calm them down.

Through his company, Cestaro leads scenario-based training exercises for people and groups of all ages and backgrounds. The training is based on the experience of “U.S. special operations personnel and seasoned nonprofit field workers, with decades spent operating across multiple continents,” according to the company’s website.

“I work with a lot of different folks, but the format is always the same,” he said. “We give them a scenario-based situation, and they apply what skills they have at their level. They gain confidence in the employment of it, they think about roles and responsibilities.”

For the middle school training, Cestaro said the key was to keep the concepts “as basic as possible,”

“There are certain things that have to happen, but none of them have to be complex,” he said. “Make the situation as simple as possible as quickly as possible. That’s the best medicine.”

Beyond reacting to emergency situations, the training offered students the chance to work on broader life skills such as leadership, communication and delegation.

Last week’s training comes at a time where shootings and other instances of school violence are increasingly becoming more prevalent. But Cestaro said that the scenario-based training is not tethered to anything specific that is happening culturally. 

“The fact of the matter is people have been bleeding to death since the dawn of time,” he said. “When you look at the world globally, there’s always something going on. These exact wounds that they’re seeing are happening somewhere now, and there’s somebody who doesn’t know what to do about that.”

Kelly said the middle school will offer another round of scenario-based training to students next month, adding that the training will be ongoing at the school.