Summer Safety Series: Pool Safety

Brush off your barbecue grills, stock up on popsicles, and get yourself a new swimsuit because…

Summer has officially arrived!

After a winter with too many snows and a Spring with too much rain, I am ready for summer. If your neighborhood is anything like mine, then the arrival of summer means:

Pool Season!

In the excitement of summer, it’s tempting to throw on a suit and jump on in…

but wait!

For most of us, it’s been about a year since we dipped our toes in the water. Before you and your family cannonball in, make sure you review these Pool Safety Tips to be sure you enjoy your summer safely!

Did you know: A child can drown in the time it takes to answer a telephone. More than 200 young children drown in backyard swimming pools each year.

Swim Safety Basics:

  1. Swim only in designated areas
  2. Make sure a lifeguard or responsible adult trained in CPR and first aid is present and attentive at all times
  3. A child who is drowning may not look like the ‘drowning’ we see in TV and movies. Before you swim with a child, please read this article about what drowning looks like and how to spot it. Read it by clicking here. 
  4. Maintain constant eye-to-eye supervision with children in and around the swimming pool
  5. Stay in arm’s reach of young kids
  6. Establish and enforce clear pool safety rules (ex: No diving, Stay away from drains, no running, etc.) Post these rules where everyone using the pool can read them
  7. Never leave a young child unattended in or near water
  8. Do not trust a child’s life to another child
  9. Teach children to ask permission before going near water
  10. Issue the adult supervisor an item such as a whistle, bracelet, etc. to reinforce which adult is in charge of the safety of the children
  11. Make sure young or inexperienced swimmers are wearing US Coast Guard-approved life jacket. Floaties or other inflatable flotation devices are not life jackets and should never be substituted for adult supervision.
  12. Avoid distractions when supervising children around water. Remove children from the swimming pool for any distraction such as a telephone call, use of restroom, etc.
  13. Keep children away from pool drains, pipes and other openings to avoid entrapments. Here are some tips to review in case someone becomes entrapped.
  14. If a child is missing, check the water first– every second counts!
  15. Never permit any person to swim alone
  16. Have appropriate equipment, such as reaching or throwing equipment, a cell phone, life jackets and a first aid kit, within a reachable distance- not inside!
  17. Know how and when to call 9-1-1
  18. Keep your pool clean and clear by maintaining proper chemical levels, circulation and filtration. This way, you can clearly see what is happening in the pool and minimize risks of earaches, rashes or diseases
  19. Make sure everyone in the home knows how to respond to water emergencies by having an emergency plan in place with your children
  20. Protect your skin! Limit the amount of direct sunlight you receive between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. and wear sunscreen with a protection factor of at least 15
  21. Stay hydrated: Drink plenty of water regularly, even if you’re not thirsty. Avoid drinks with alcohol or caffeine
  22. If it’s your pool:
    1. Have a fence enclosure that isolates your pool from the home, play areas, front and side yards and the neighbor’s yard
    2. Make sure all gates in the isolation fence are self-closing and self-latching
    3. All chairs, tables, large toys or other objects that would allow a child to climb up to reach the gate latch or enable the child to climb over the isolation fence should be removed or kept inside the fenced area
  23. Keep the following items away from the water:
    1. Tricycles or riding toys
    2. Electronic devices
    3. Any and all pool toys when the pool is not in use

 

Resources:

 

Tornado and Storm Safety

Last night’s tragic tornadoes in Texas serve as a reminder that deadly storms can form and escalate with little warning.

The best time to prepare for a Tornado or severe storm is before it hits. 

So prepare today.

Here are some helpful hints for how to prepare:

  1. Build an emergency kit. Tips for building the kit can be found here.
  2. Develop a family communication plan. Here are some suggestions.
  3. Be alert. Pay attention to the weather outside (until you need to take cover- then stay away from the windows!). These are danger signs:
    1. Dark, greenish sky
    2. Large hail
    3. Large, dark, low-lying clouds (especially if they are rotating)
    4. Loud roar similar to a train
    5. If you see any of these signs- take shelter immediately. 
  4. Pay attention to the news. Know the guidelines of when you should take cover.
  5. Locate and mark where utility switches and valves are in your home so they can be turned off in an emergency if time allows
  6. Charge your mobile phone, laptop and other mobile device batteries
  7. Brush up on your watches and warning terms. That way, you’ll understand the risk and can better make safety and evacuation decisions
    1. Severe thunderstorm watch: Conditions are conducive to the development of severe thunderstorms in and around the watch area. These storms produce hail of ¾ inch in diameter and/or wind gusts of at least 58 mph.
    2. Severe thunderstorm warning: Issued when a severe thunderstorm has been observed by spotters or indicated on radar, and is occurring or imminent in the warning area. These warnings usually last for a period of 30 to 60 minutes.
    3. Tornado watch: Conditions are favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms and multiple tornadoes in and around the watch area. People in the affected areas are encouraged to be vigilant in preparation for severe weather.
    4. Tornado warning: Spotters have sighted a tornado or one has been indicated on radar, and is occurring or imminent in the warning area. When a tornado warning has been issued, people in the affected area are strongly encouraged to take cover immediately.
  8. Review what to do DURING a tornado. Have a plan for different locations: at home, in the car, at an outdoor event, etc. Here is a great guide
  9. If you evacuate and safely have time, notify friends and/or family members who are unaffected by the storm of where you’re going and why.
  10. Photograph your valuables and store them in a fire and waterproof safe. Also use the safe to store important documents such as birth certificates, ownership documentation for cars and boats, Social Security cards, insurance policies and wills.
  11. Check your homeowner’s insurance to confirm your coverage in case your home is damaged or destroyed. Tornadoes can be accompanied by heavy rains and flooding, which most homeowner’s insurance policies do not cover. Here’s some information on California Casualty’s coverage.

 For more tips check out these sources:

  1. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
  2. The Weather Channel
  3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 

Great Quotes for Nurses!

nursequotes

As our Spa Giveaway for Nurses draws to a close, we wanted to share some of the best quotes for nurses we found! Click here to enter for YOUR chance to win!

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon. – Dag Hammarskjold

Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription. -Val Saintsbury

To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through; is to be a nurse. – Rawsi Williams

Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their biggest strength and fatal flaw. –Dr. Jean Watson

Our job as Nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, every day, while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’ -Christine Belle

Healing yourself is connected with healing others. -Yoko Ono

The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me. -Clara Barton

To make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful or perfect. You just have to care. -Mandy Hale

You don’t build a house without its foundation. You don’t build a hospital without its Nurses. –Anonymous

Nurses Know: The mind can only look. The heart can truly see. -Carol Gino

Nurses quietly go about their work in a noble profession, uncelebrated soldiers toiling through the days and nights in service to the sick, the injured and the dying. -Steve Lopez

You’re going to be there when a lot of people are born, and when a lot of people die. In most every culture, such moments are regarded as sacred and private, made special by a divine presence. No one on Earth would be welcomed, but you’re personally invited. What an honor that is. -Thom Dick

They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou

America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system. – President Barack Obama

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind. – Napoleon

The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. – Unknown

The heart that gives, gathers. -Tao Te Ching

Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene–nine-tenths of it!   -Henry Miller

The nurse who can smile when things go wrong is probably going off duty.

We’re armored against our own troubles. We can’t afford to give in to despair. Then you see someone else struggling, and it breaks your… heart. – Sean Stewart

Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice. – Martin H. Fischer

Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence. – James Bryce

The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know is, can you cure him? -Martin H. Fischer

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature. – John Brown

Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell. – Lewis G. Janes

It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. – Chinese Proverb

Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. – Ben Hecht

Cancer is a word, not a sentence. – John Diamond

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. – Charles Dickens

Attention Nurses! We are drawing the winner of our Spa Getaway soon!
Click here to enter to win!

Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts. – Florence Nightingale

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest. – William Osler

Nursing is not for everyone. It takes a very strong, intelligent, and compassionate person to take on the ills of the world with passion and purpose and work to maintain the health and well-being of the planet. No wonder we’re exhausted at the end of the day! – Donna Wilk Cardillo

A nurse will always give us hope, an angel with a stethoscope. – Terri Guillemets

It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing. — Mother Theresa

There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow. — Orison Swett Marden

Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy. — Chogyam Trungpa

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food. — Joseph Butler

Nursing isn’t what you do it’s who you are. -Unknown

Character is not made in a crisis it is only exhibited. – Rose Dorothy Freeman

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. -Mother Teresa

 Do you want to speak to the Doctor in charge, or the Nurse who really knows what is going on? -Unknown

Always thank your nurse. Sometimes they’re the only one between you and a hearse.  – Warren Beatty

In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it. –Marianne Williamson

Healing is a matter of time but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. – Hippocrates

Our job is to love people. When it hurts. When it’s awkward. When it’s uncool and embarrassing. Our job is to stand together, to carry the burdens of one another and to meet each other in our questions. – Jamie Tworkowksi

Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces. – Dana Basem

Nursing is Sacrificing with and for Humanity! – Unknown

Every Nurse is Angel with a Key for Healthy Community! All in Caring for Patients is part of Nursing Soul! – Aleksandar Radenovi

Bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy… nurses are rarely short on caring. – Sharon Hudacek

When I think about all the patients and their loved ones that I have worked with over the years, I know most of them don’t remember me nor I them. But I do know that I gave a little piece of myself to each of them and they to me and those threads make up the beautiful tapestry in my mind that is my career in nursing. – Donna Wilk Cardillo

Nurses: one of the few blessings of being ill. – Sara Moss-Wolfe

If love can’t cure it, nurses can. – Unknown

The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe. – Florence Nightingale

Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health. – Lois Capps

Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse. – Elizabeth Kenny

Whether a person is a male or female, a nurse is a nurse. – Gary Veale

The character of the nurse is as important as the knowledge she possesses. – Carolyn Jarvis

You treat a disease: You win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you win—no matter the outcome. — Patch Adams

In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do. — Dorothea Dix (superintendent of women nurses for the Union Army)

I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. – Florence Nightingale

Police Week

Police Week runs from May 12-18

Keep an eye on the blog for some of our favorite quotes, images, and resources surrounding the week’s events. And if you see a Law Enforcement Officer in your community, don’t forget to thank them for all they do!

 

Police Week

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Candle Vigil

We light a candle in solidarity tonight with the men & women in blue gathered in Washington, DC for the 25th-Annual Candlelight Vigil at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. This ceremony honors the 47 law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2012- as well as all the officers who have given the ultimate sacrifice before them and all those who continue to risk their lives for you and I every day. Learn more here: https://nleomf.org/

Our List – 94 of the Best Teacher Quotes

Find a Great Teacher QuoteQuotes like these are the inspiration for giveaways like our $2,500 Academic Award! If you could use some extra cash for your classroom, click here to enter!

Our job is to teach the student we have. Not the ones we would like to have. Not the ones we used to have. Those we have right now. All of them. –Dr. Kevin Maxwell

Children will not remember you for the material things you provided but for the feeling that you cherished them. – Richard L. Evans

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. –Margaret Mead

The self taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers.  -Mark Twain

Be curious, not judgmental. -Walt Whitman

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. -George R.R. Martin

Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. -Maya Angelou

Your education is worth what Your are worth. -Anon

You must master a new way to think before you can master a new way to be. -Marianne Williamson

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. -Charles William Eliot

From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact. -George Lucas

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. –Aristotle

Don’t try to fix the students, fix ourselves first.  The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.  When our students fail, we as teacher,  t0o, have  failed. -Marva Collins

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. —attributed to Socrates

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation. -Marcus Tullius Cicero

We teachers are rather good at magic, you know. -J.K. Rowling

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.  –Socrates

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. -Einstein

If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny.  -W. Clement Stone

You cant scare me. I teach.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.  -Albert Einstein

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will. -Vernon Howard

Wisdom is the lesson learned, applied. –Rick Beneteau

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important. -Bill Gates

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around. -Jim Rohn

Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival.  -W. Edwards Deming

We are giving some lucky educators a $2,500 academic award!
If you could use some extra cash for your classroom, click here to enter!

Even More Popular Teacher Quotes Below

Imagination decides everything.   -Blaise Pascal

The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. –BB King

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity and tolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. -Aldous Huxley

To nourish and raise children against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons. –Marilyn French

If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. –Tyron Edwards

He is to be educated not because he’s to make shoes, nails, and pins, but because he is a man. -William Ellery Channing

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. –Claude Levi-Strauss

Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake. -John Cleese

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. -Leonardo da Vinci

A good teacher is like a candle-  it comsumes itself to light the way for others. -Unknown

What is done to children, they will do to society. -Karl Menninger

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. -Edward Everett

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. -Mark Van Doren

The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children.  -Louise Johannot

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. -Gilbert K. Chesterton

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.  -William Butlet Yeats

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. -Maya Angelou

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. -Franklin D. Roosevelt

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. -Victor Hugo

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day’s work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years. -Jacques Barzun

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called “truth.” -Dan Rather

If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn’t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher’s job. -Donald D. Quinn

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. -John F. Kennedy

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. –Gail Godwin

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. -Tracy Kidder

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry Brooks Adams

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. –Margaret Fuller

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. -William Arthur Ward

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. -Karl Menninger

Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. 

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. -Kahlil Gibran

To teach is to learn twice. -Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource. -John F. Kennedy

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation. -John F. Kennedy

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. -Alexander the Great

We are giving some lucky educators a $2,500 academic award!
If you could use some extra cash for your classroom, click here to enter!

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. –Plutarch

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”  -Khalil Gibran

Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. —Haim Ginott

Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting. —Frank McCourt

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. —Jacques Martin Barzun

There is no recipe to be a great teacher, that’s what is unique about them. -Robert Sternberg

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. — John Steinbeck

I got into acting because my teachers kept nudging me into it. The power a teacher has to influence someone is so great. I can’t think of a profession I have more respect for. — Jon Hamm

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. -Lee Iacocc

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. –Edward de Bour

Imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. -Charles F. Kettering

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. – Robert Frost

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. –Einstein

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -Aristotle

Children will not remember you for the material things you provided. But for the feeling that you cherished them. -Richard L Evans

Creativity is intelligence having fun. -Einstein

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass

There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were born. And how you become most truly alive. –Oprah

If you cant explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. –Einstein

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. -Rumi

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle

Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or in the same way. -George Evans

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new. -Og Mandino

Tell if you know, ask if you don’t. -Duane Alan Hahn

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. -John Cotton Dana

Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation. –Everett Coop

It is only the ignorant who despise education. –Publilius Syrus

You can’t learn less. –Buckminster Fuller

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. -John Dewey

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. -John Dewey

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him. -Galileo Galilei

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. -Albert Einstein

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it. –Dale Carnegie