Safety Town at Lawton Elementary School teaches kids important life lessons

For four weeks each summer, students gather to learn some of life’s most enduring lessons: Don’t talk to strangers, stop, drop and roll, and keep a good distance from any moving vehicle.

Safety Town, a rite of passage since 1974 for Ann Arbor children on the threshold of kindergarten, is being held at Lawton Elementary School this month.

About 600 students will attend one of the four week-long half-day sessions. While other city-school joint programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education have faded away, Safety Town has survived and thrived. It's the only joint program run by Ann Arbor Public Schools in cooperation with the Ann Arbor police and fire departments and Huron Valley Ambulance, said Angelita Jacobs, the school district's community education coordinator who oversees Safety Town.

The pint-size students learn about stranger danger, fire and bus safety, traffic lights, seat belts and home and personal safety. Lessons on water safety were added this year, Jacobs said. Students are taught to park their pockets (that’s kindergarten-speak for sitting down on the bus), call 911 in an emergency and check home smoke detectors. They're led through a simulated fire with fog acting like smoke, where they learn to stop, drop and roll. And they're introduced to police officers, where they get to press the sirens and horns of a patrol car.

Student Max Meints said he's learning lessons but having fun. The most important lesson, he said, is staying seated until the bus stops. The most fun? Riding bikes through a simulated Ann Arbor, where students get to practice the hand signals they learn and obey functioning traffic lights.

Jacobs knows Safety Town makes a difference: One youngster survived a bike accident thanks to a Safety Town helmet. Each student is given a bike helmet when he or she completes the program.

Jacobs said one girl felt comfortable enough to report inappropriate behavior by a neighborhood babysitter because of the lessons learned in Safety Town. “The program has a huge impact on the community,” Jacobs said.

And there was the time Jacobs witnessed Safety Town’s impact first-hand. Her son and a friend were walking together when a large dog came at them. The friend panicked and started to scream and run. Her son stopped in his tracks and shouted to stand as still as a tree, Jacobs said - the lesson he learned in Safety Town two years earlier.

Lessons are packed in the five, three-hour days. A Safety Town staple is Buster the Bus, a talking, smaller version of a yellow school bus. Buster is a hit, going for laughs by asking his audience if he can eat a peanut and jelly sandwich on board the bus or skateboard down its aisles. Students board a real school bus - many for the first time - and take a quick ride around the neighborhood.

Safety Town is supported by tuition of $75 and community donations.

Photo: Max Meints laughs as Buster the Talking School Bus wonders whether it's OK to skateboard down the aisle
of a school bus. (Photo by Janet Miller)

Janet Miller is a freelance writer for AnnArbor.com. Reach our news desk at 734-623-2530 or news@annarbor.com.