First-grade heroes save teacher’s life when she starts choking in classroom
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COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Virginia (WTVR) — Three first graders at Lakeview Elementary School in Colonial Heights became unlikely heroes when they sprang into action to save their teacher’s life after she started choking on food.
Madison Swift, 23, was in her first year teaching when the frightening incident occurred a week ago.
“I was eating while working with a student when I suddenly started choking on my food,” Swift said.
That’s when three of her students — 7-year-old Kolton Hersh and 6-year-olds Dereck Contreras-Franco and Bryson Doss — realized something was seriously wrong.
“She choked and she cannot breathe,” Contreras-Franco said.
“All of a sudden, her face and eyes started going red,” Doss said, demonstrating how Swift was gesturing for help.
Each of the three boys took a different approach to helping their teacher. Contreras-Franco went for the emergency call button on the wall, and when the office answered, he and other students began screaming that Swift was choking.
Doss decided to run out the door to get another teacher “because I knew that she was choking and I knew I needed to get another teacher.”
Hersh, who was right beside Swift, took the most direct approach. “Then I pat her on her back to get the food out of her throat,” he said, demonstrating the back blows he performed.
Swift vividly remembers how her students helped save her life that day. “The student next to me bent me over and started doing back blows to my back to where I dislodged the food,” she said.
She praised each boy’s quick thinking. When Contreras-Franco pressed the emergency button, “he and all the other students in my room were letting the office know I was choking and that I needed help.”
Doss “got the teacher across the hallway once he realized it was an emergency.”
Swift has no doubt about what happened that Friday. “They 100% saved my life,” she said.
The first-year teacher believes the strong relationship she built with her students from day one made all the difference. “At the beginning of the year, I built that trust and love relationship so they saw their teacher in crisis and they just kind of jumped into action right away,” Swift said.
Swift has a treasure box in her classroom where students who perform well throughout the week can pick something out. That Friday, Kolton, Dereck and Bryson all got that special opportunity — a small reward for their life-saving heroism.
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