Animals Tell Us How To Be Healthy

Story by Arianna Shaw, Corde Shaw, and Simone Crank. Photo by American Heart Association

FEB. 2, 2017: On January 25, 2017, our school Friendship Southeast Academy K-5th grade had an assembly. We had a visitor named Sarah. Sarah showed us a video about her friends Grace and Michael. She showed two videos, one was called Jump Rope Heart Survivor-Michael Ehlers. When he was a baby, Michael had a heart problem. He had different types of heart operations. When he grew up, he had a good life. Because he enjoyed soccer and he liked to dance, He called himself Super Mike.

The second video was called Go Wild For Heart Health with the 2017 Jump Rope For Heart Zoo Crew.  Rory is a part of the Zoo Crew that is made up of Rory and his friends. Rory is a lion. Rory spreads the word about heart health. Another friend on the crew is Mr. Tusker. He’s an elephant who told us to play sixteen minutes every day to get exercise. My favorite character on the crew is Jenny Kicks, she told us about salty food. Salty food makes the heart work overtime, so that’s not good. Every day I see people eat lots of salty food.

After the video, someone dressed like Rory came out with some dance moves that were funny. When the assembly was over, we followed Rory out of the gym, and we found out that it was really Mr. B. (Mr. Baskin).  

Arianna Shaw is a 2nd grade scholar, Corde’ Shaw is a 3rd grade scholar, and Simone Crank is a 5th grade scholar at Friendship Southeast Academy.