By Kasey Fowler, Staff Writer
Northwest Oklahoma 4-H’ers learned about healthy lifestyles Thursday during a leadership conference at Oakwood Mall.
“There are people here from Guymon to Guthrie to Ponca City. Fourteen counties are represented,” said Kevin Hackett, Northwest District 4-H youth development specialist.
The 4-H’ers met in four workshops Thursday morning to learn about making good choices. The workshops were titled “Life Rocks,” “Keep Driving, Driven by Distractions,” “Addictions Stop with Me” and “Actively Driven to Good Health.”
“It gives them an opportunity to learn more,” Hackett said. “They are learning about the dangers of tobacco. They have lungs that show a smoker. They have active games to get kids involved. They are learning about the dangers of driving distractions. There is one on making good life decisions.”
At the “Addictions Stop with Me” workshop, 4-H’ers were taught about the dangers of smoking.
Cindy Conner, Garfield County Oklahoma State University Extension 4-H educator, started the workshop by showing the number of deaths by different causes each hour.
Conner dropped different colored marbles into a plastic lung to represent the deaths. Conner began with death from AIDS, car accidents, violence, other types of accidents and, finally, the number of deaths that are smoking related.
Ricki Schroeder and Derek Gabriel, Garfield County 4-H’ers, said the smoking exhibit was interesting to them.
“It shows how many people die from tobacco. It is like two or three times more than anything else,” Schroeder said.
Also during the smoking workshop Conner showed a “man” smoking a cigarette into a clear box. It allowed the 4-H’ers to see the amount of smoke from one cigarette. Conner also pointed out the box was yellowing from the smoke.
The last thing Conner did to show the dangers of smoking was to display two sets of pig’s lungs, one a smoker’s and one a non-smoker’s. Pig lungs are almost exactly the same as human lungs.
Conner filled them both up with air but the smoker’s lungs did not inflate completely. Conner also had the 4-H’ers touch the cancer that had started to grow and the hardened artery on the smoker’s lungs.
“I really liked the smoking exhibits. It opened up eyes to the problem,” Ga-briel said.
Finally, the 4-H’ers took turns putting on goggles that simulated being drunk. Then they attempted to do several tasks, such as throwing a ball to a partner, picking the ball up off the floor and walking a straight line.
“You would throw it and it would go nowhere near them,” Schroeder said.
“It was impossible to walk a straight line. I felt really dizzy,” Gabriel said.
There were two types of goggles, one simulating day time and one night time. With the night goggles the simulated drunk person’s partner would shine a light in their eyes.
“It doesn’t seem to be coming from where it was really coming from,” Gabriel said. “I would definitely not want to get pulled over and have to walk a line. I would be falling over. If I was driving and thought the headlights were coming from somewhere else, I would probably hit someone.”
Representatives from 4-H clubs can get grants to be able to purchase some of the things needed to do these workshops in their counties if they wanted.
“I think we can teach our younger ones about this and they can take it and make good decisions,” Gabriel said.
The conference continues today.
