Police officers bring equipment, vehicles for student event

When Nicole Hahn, principal at Cameo Elementary, invited me to drop by before the end of the school year, I figured it was one of the end-of-year activities.

When students had returned to school in person, there were still certain events canceled and/or modified to remain in compliance with health restrictions.

One canceled event was “Field Day,” a fun outdoors event of physical games and competitions. Unable to hold the traditional Field Day, the ever-resourceful principal Hahn drew upon contacts from the past to put together something special for her elementary students.

Hahn had served as a science teacher at the CHS Freshman Academy for many years. An innovative, CHSFA school-wide project she'd helped facilitate was the re-enactment of a famous historical court case, having begun as part of a history lesson.

Involving all students, it also crossed over all subjects. For the project, CHSFA teachers had developed a good relationship with several state police officers, who'd helped annually with this hands-on project, demonstrating applied sciences with students: forensics, fingerprinting, analyzing trajectories of blood spatter, and much more.

Given the current restrictions for activities, Hahn, wanting to offer something special to her elementary students, reached out to her former state police contacts from CHSFA days. They rallied generously and brought a wide array of their “toys” to her school to demonstrate, interact with, and to also build good relations with the elementary students.

Although Hahn had described the plan, arriving at Cameo was quite an event itself. Not only was there a fleet of state police vehicles, lights flashing, there was also strange special equipment: robots, gigantic defense structures. I'd never seen anything like some of the equipment they brought, and I'm sure my open-hanging mouth mirrored the students'. Groups of officers were stationed at various points, explaining everything to the mixed awe-struck audience of students and staff.

Hahn walked up soon after I'd arrived, and we chatted about the impressive site of all the huge equipment, with flashing lights everywhere. Hahn mentioned she'd put the word out explaining the details of the event, so parents, neighbors, and any others would not be alarmed.

The greatest delight was noticing students of all grade levels rotating through the various stations as officers leaned or knelt down, interacting with the kids. The laughter and wide grins of the officers and students spoke volumes as they chatted with each other, and it was clear to see the event was a raving success.

Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy is the instructional technology coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools and can be reached at:

[email protected]