Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School Your bridge to the future… Your gateway to success.
Colleagues,
We are always excited to share interesting ideas from one of our MAVA schools. Today we are pleased to share an idea from Upper Cape Tech.
David
Upper Cape Tech Students Learn About Firefighting
By MADISON SCHOFIELD
Alyssa Hume-Hennessy dons full protective equipment.
Upper Cape Regional Technical High School has added a new career pathway for students to pursue public safety.
For the past few weeks, seniors at Upper Cape Tech have been learning everything there is to know about firefighters: how to extinguish a fire with a fire extinguisher safely, how to quickly put on personal protective equipment and the science of fire, what causes it and how it behaves.
The students also learned specialty topics in firefighting, like how wildfires are dealt with, how drones can be used to locate fires quickly, and being on the Cape, fire departments also felt it was important for the students to learn maritime rescue units.
The class was inspired by a similar class started at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich last year.
Superintendent Roger D. Forget said the class is about giving students more opportunities to learn about different career options available to them.
“For high school students, for seniors in particular, this is a possible career path that most of them have not thought about,” he said.
Students at Upper Cape Tech select their shop their freshman year; by senior year, sometimes students are no longer passionate about the trade they selected and are unsure where life will take them post-graduation.
“These kids have to pick their shop freshman year, and they’re doing it for the next four years. There’s a portion of kids that get to senior year and are like, ‘I never want to do electrical again in my whole life,’” said Shaun Cahill, who has been organizing the class. “This just gives them other opportunities, options and things to think about.”
Allia Rowley learns how to safely extinguish a fire.
When then-deputy Cahill retired from the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department last January, Upper Cape Tech administrators knew they had to reach out with the idea.
“Mr. Cahill has always been a part of Upper Cape… He used to come in to do tech enrichment courses with our 9th graders,” Mr. Forget said. “As Shaun was retiring from Barnstable County, it provided us with a unique opportunity for us to tap into his knowledge of law enforcement.”
After Mr. Cahill got involved, getting the various departments on board with the class was a piece of cake. Mr. Cahill said that the various fire departments jumped at the opportunity to work with students, adding that members of the departments are former Upper Cape Tech students and that the class allows them to give back to their school and help build their community.
The class takes place during the student’s academic week, giving them a break from their regular curriculum and trades and an opportunity to learn about public safety careers and how firefighters do their jobs. In addition to learning how firefighters do their job, students also learned why firefighters do what they do.
On Wednesday, October 18, the students welcomed Captain Robert Feeney from the Onset Fire Department.
Mr. Feeney is a survivor of the Station Nightclub fire, the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in US history. He told students how he and some friends had gone to the club to see the band Great White perform. One pyrotechnic display went wrong, and three minutes later, the building was in flames, and 100 people died.
Mr. Feeney said he was never interested in being a firefighter—he was supposed to begin training at the police academy just a week after the nightclub fire—but life did not go as planned. After years of recovery, Mr. Feeney began speaking about his experience and traveled the country to speak with fire departments, legislators, and citizens on the importance of fire safety and having sprinklers installed.
He was eventually invited and persuaded to apply for a position at the Onset Fire Department, where he has worked since 2014. “I got to turn the worst thing that ever happened to me into a positive thing,” Mr. Feeney told students.
Principal Joshua Greeley said the class is extremely popular with seniors and praised Mr. Cahill for all his work developing it. Alyssa Hume-Hennessy said she has always dreamed of being a firefighter, and the class helped her connect with her local fire department in Sagamore and get an internship there.
“I’ve loved it; I think it’s long overdue that schools have classes like these,” said Ms. Hume-Hennessy. “I’ve dreamed of becoming a firefighter for my whole life, so I’ve been able to use the class as kind of a job search.”
In addition to providing new pathways for students, the class has also helped students build off the trades they have been studying for the past few years. Allia Rowley and Oliver Gibbons of Wareham are both in the environmental science shop and said they were particularly interested when the hazmat team came to visit, and they got to learn about hazardous materials and how oil spills are cleaned.
Ms. Rowley added that criminologists and forensic scientists will visit later in the year and she is particularly excited about that. The class will cover more than just firefighters. Mr. Cahill said soon he will meet with the various police departments in the area to finalize a schedule of when they can visit and what they hope to teach the students, including how to conduct a motor vehicle stop properly.
After that, Mr. Cahill said he hopes to invite representatives from the sheriff’s department, district attorney’s office and corrections facilities to speak with students.
David J. Ferreira
MAVA Communications Coordinator
DavidFerreira