Local Educator Uses Simulator to Prevent Child Abuse

EAU CLAIRE, WI, February 24, 2014 (Press-News.org) Anoka Middle School for the Arts teacher Linda Keller is making a big impact on student's lives by using an infant simulator for child abuse prevention. Keller, a seventh-grade Family & Consumer Sciences (FACS) teacher, acquired one of Realityworks' RealCare Shaken Baby simulators during a drawing at the Minnesota Family & Consumer Science Conference this past January.

Each year, Keller teaches 250-300 students a variety of lifetime skills, from food and nutrition to caring for and understanding infants, toddlers and preschoolers. She has a passion for families, no matter their composition, and uses that passion every day as she works with impressionable adolescents.
"These kids are at the perfect age to take on new tasks. What we teach them helps them take on new responsibilities needed for life," said Keller.

During the child abuse prevention learning target in her child development unit, Keller emphasizes the importance of managing stress and frustration with her students. She helps them understand how a moment of losing their "cool" could make a life-long impact on a child. To assist in conveying this to her students, Keller uses the RealCare Shaken Baby simulator. When the simulator is shaken, parts of its brain that are damaged light up, demonstrating to students the long-term effects shaking a baby could have. The success of this unit and the simulator highlights the crucial need for education in FACS classes.

"No matter what a child's future career path is, being a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome will cause damage to parts of the brain that are critical in developing future skills needed to succeed," said Keller. "With this simulator, we will be able to make a greater visual impact and impression on students of this fact."

Keller will be sharing her new simulator with Anoka FACS colleagues, and hopes to extend this type of education to all middle school students enrolled in Minnesota's largest school district.
For more information on Realityworks and the RealCare Shaken Baby simulator, visit http://www.realityworks.com

About Realityworks, Inc.
Realityworks, Inc. was established 19 years ago with the mission to better address teen pregnancy prevention, parenting skills, and to address child abuse and neglect through educational products. Realityworks is most famous for RealCare Baby (known formerly as Baby Think It Over, BTIO). Over the last decade, this unique company developed several other simulators and programs with the desire to create engaging, experiential learning tools. These tools help educators engage students while bettering the human condition. New products address career preparation areas such as business management, finance and entrepreneurship, and most recently a welding simulation system known as teachWELD. The company has made a worldwide impact, sending simulators into more than 67 percent of U.S. school districts and reaching more than 6,000,000 young people. Programs also extend to more than 89 countries worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.realityworks.com, or call toll-free 800-830-1416.