During a recent lunch period at Ridgeway Elementary School in Ocean County, lunch aide Alyssa Testa noticed a student began choking.
She quickly sprang into action and called over her colleague, Reid Stapp, for help.
“I saw that they were in distress and my first reaction was to help,” Testa said Wednesday.
Stapp, a physical education teacher at the Manchester Township elementary school, immediately went over to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the student.
The object was dislodged and the student was safely walked to the school nurse for further evaluation, a spokesperson for the district said.
The child’s identity and grade level are being withheld for privacy reasons, but school officials said the student is doing well.
According to Stapp, who has been a teacher for 17 years, the Manchester Township School District regularly trains its teachers in CPR, AED and first aid. So, when he approached the situation, he knew exactly what to do.
“I went over to the student, identified the situation… then really, there wasn’t anything other than falling back on the training I had received to help dislodge that item from the student’s throat,” Stapp said.
Both teachers, who have strong community ties to the district, were honored at a board of education meeting on Feb. 26.
Testa, who has been a lunch aide for three years, attended Ridgeway Elementary and graduated from Manchester High School in 2019.
“It’s more to me than just a job. It’s a community and a family to me,” she said
Stapp’s daughter attends the school, and he said he always wanted to teach and live in the same town.
“What we did was really positive and it was a good feeling that everybody knew what to do, when to do it, and we had a great outcome,” the physical education teacher said.
