Lincoln teacher saves first grader from choking

Lincoln Elementary School first grade teacher Barbara Schaafsma was in just her fifth day leading a classroom full-time in Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 on Tuesday, August 29. However, that will be a day that she, as well as all of her students, will probably remember for a lifetime. That was a day that she saved a child’s life.

During the first few days of school, teachers are charged with, among other things, keeping order of their new classrooms and getting to know everything about their new students, ranging from something as simple as their names to their habits or special needs.

One of those students who presents a special need in Schaafsma’s class is John, a hearing impaired student who is profoundly deaf. His condition necessitates that Schaafsma wear an amplification device at all times so he can hear her lessons. After spending last year in a hearing itinerant classroom at Central Elementary School, John moved into a fully integrated classroom for the first time this year at Lincoln.

John’s desk is located at the front of the classroom, which helps Schaafsma monitor his progress in his new setting. On August 29, that attention saved John’s life.

Schaafsma was reading a story to her class during “snack time,” for which students can bring in their own healthy snack daily. As she read, she noticed John’s shoulders thrusting as he was trying to cough up a Goldfish cracker. She patted him on the back to help him get the cracker up and out, but soon noticed that he was turning a darker shade of purple. John was choking on a cracker and could not breathe.

Some twenty years earlier, when she was a teacher’s aide in Michigan, Schaafsma had learned the Heimlich Maneuver. It had come in handy when her daughter, who was two years old at the time and is now an eighth grader at Heritage Grove Middle School, began choking in her car seat. On that day, a panicked Schaafsma pulled over to the side of the road, removed her daughter from her car seat, and saved her life.

Fast-forward 11 years to last week, and Schaafsma was faced with a similar situation. She picked John up out of his chair, got down on her knees and put her arms around him. On her third thrust, that cracker shot its way out of his throat. John was safe.

She then turned what she had just done - saving a first grader’s life - into a lesson for her students. First, she assured them that what she had done hadn’t hurt John. She told them that John had a cracker stuck in his throat, and that she needed to force air up from his lungs to help force the cracker out.

A few minutes later, Assistant Principal Kelley Gallt arrived to give Schaafsma a minute to catch her breath. When she went to check on John at the nurse’s office, John was eager to return to class.

Days later, Schaafsma recounts the entire ordeal with amazing accuracy, considering how quickly everything ran together. She said that she felt calmer in saving John than she did her own daughter 11 years before, and also hopes that August 29 was the last time she has to use the Heimlich Maneuver.

Schaafsma, who had previously taught in Indian Prairie School District 204 and at St. Mary Magdalene in Joliet, spent last year as a substitute teacher in District 202. From January through Spring Break she covered a teacher’s maternity leave at Lincoln, and when an increase in enrollment forced a classroom to split, she stayed on at the school for the remainder of the year. She was hired as a full-time teacher at Lincoln over the summer.

Lincoln is one of 14 elementary schools in Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202, and is located at 14740 Meadow Drive in Plainfield.

For more information, contact District 202 Community Relations Coordinator Tony Hamilton at (815) 577-4092.