Briggs mini-fire academy gives 19 teens look at possible career

NORWALK, Conn. — The teenagers who enjoyed crawling through a maze Friday at the Norwalk Fire Department headquarters Friday are a sign of the future at Briggs High School, Principal Marie Allen said.

“Over a year ago I began to pursue the rebranding of Briggs High School as a program that not only provides a quality academic experience for our students, but also creates a clear pathway to a career,” Allen said in a Thursday email to Fire Chief Denis McCarthy. “Little did I know that in this last year of trials and errors we would forge a partnership with Norwalk’s Fire Department that embodies all that we have been striving to achieve.

Briggs sent 19 students to the four-week long Mini-Briggs Fire Academy, Allen said. Friday was the last day, a culmination of exercises that were done earlier, McCarthy said in an email.

That meant watching a Norwalk firefighter crawl through a maze on the second floor of the firehouse and then getting to try it themselves.

Four Briggs students were in the afternoon class, including Wendell Hunt, 18, who impressed the firefighters because he seems interested in becoming a firefighter.

“I start panicking but then I was like, ‘calm down,’” Wendell said, of his experience crawling through the maze, following a hose on the floor, while wearing firefighting protective gear and a breather.

First the kids did it the easy way – they could see. Then the firefighters covered the windows of the mock-home and turned out the lights. The kids did it again.

One of the tricks was that they had to roll on their side while trying to go under wires in a hallway. That way they could push the wires up. It’s a challenge to breathe under the circumstances, a firefighter said.

Harder than expected, Wendell said. Imagine doing it with more equipment on, he said.

“I like it, so when I graduate I might just see if I can do something, take a test for it,” Wendell said.

Trey Williams, 17, said the academy was a good experience. He’s “kind of interested” in being a firefighter.

“It’s a good job but I don’t think it’s for me. In a real situation – it was hard. If someone’s life was on the line it would be much harder,” Trey said.

“It was fun, definitely challenging, it was a good test so I liked it,” said Valentin Brito, 17, who said he wants to go into the military.

Friday at Briggs has been a chance to try out different trades, Wendell said.

Briggs has been doing a lot of academies this year, Nicole Lay Alaimo, a math teacher, said to McCarthy. “This is one, we have said, is so great,” she said.

“There has been a notable difference in the students that have attended the mini Fire Academy,” Allen wrote to McCarthy. “A few have expressed a genuine interest in pursuing a career in the Fire Department, for others this experience has sparked an interest in civil service, but all of them have a new found drive to identify their passions and pursue it with the same level of dedicated demonstrated by their instructors at the Fire House. These instructors have welcomed our 19 into their lives, bantering with the kids, sharing their inside jokes, demonstrating some of what it takes to be a firefighter, while revealing a more tender side of the profession-a genuine concern for their fellow firefighters and a commitment to protecting their community.”

The students “were not handpicked, they are not our top students, they are not our bottom students; these young men and women are the typical Briggs student,” Allen wrote. “These are young people who, for various reasons, did not begin their high school careers with success, but have managed to hold on long enough to receive a second shot. Here at Briggs, we want to make this second shot count, and with your help we have engaged these students beyond what is possible in the classroom alone.”

The accolade from Allen continued with, “I could not demonstrate to our young people that the pursuit of a career is really deciding on how to best serve our community and how to share our greatest selves with the world. In four short weeks your firefighters have done this and more.”

“We have been in dialogue with Briggs for a year looking for the right combination of time and content for a successful program,” McCarthy wrote in an email to NancyOnNorwalk. “As you can see from Dr. Allen’s note that we finally found the right mix. Our Firefighters and Officers have been extraordinarily generous sharing their time talent and energy for these students.”