Renewed Commitment to using language classes to inform students about necessary health and safety information

I repeated the online component of the nutrition lesson from the EL Civics program that got a positive response from my students a few semesters ago, and once again they found it fascinating that you could get so much information about calories and sugar, salt, and fat content from fast food companies' websites. They especially enjoyed comparing the calorie content of their favorite foods from the different restaurants and were very surprised to learn that a tuna sandwich from Subway (6" tuna - 530 calories) has about as many calories as a McDonald's Big Mac (540 calories) and more than a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese! (510 calories)

Along these lines, I've decided to incorporate more critical information about health and safety topics on a regular basis. I've created a new posting on the class blog about some consumer product recalls from this month, specifically flashlights that rupture and ignite, cribs that have slats that fall out from under the mattress causing a suffocation hazard, and Easy Bake Ovens that bake fingers of little kids to the point of amputation.

Thanks are due to my colleague Rega P. who sent me an educational video about how to put out an oil fire in the kitchen, that led me to the FEMA fire safety website (more than 950 fire related deaths in the U.S. reported in the media to date since the beginning of the year), that in turn led me to the article about the burn hazard from the flashlights.