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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Students at Heights-Murray Elementary School became honorary electrical safety detectives Tuesday when PPL Electric Utilities and The National Theatre for Children presented &#8220;Safety Detectives in Hot Pursuit&#8221; at the school.</p><p>PPL has teamed with NTC, a Minneapolis-based educational content provider that uses educational storytelling to teach students by offering live performances to 10 elementary schools in central and eastern Pennsylvania. The short two-person pieces emphasize electrical safety for children.</p><p>&#8220;Safety is a really important topic for us,&#8221; PPL Regional Affairs Director Alana Roberts said. &#8220;We want our communities to be safe places so it&#8217;s really important to educate children when we can. According to Electrical Safety Foundation International, seven children every day end up in emergency rooms with burns due to electrical safety incidents at home. We want to prevent those.&#8221;</p><p>First-grade teacher Jennifer Yuhas said alternative education activities like &#8220;Safety Detectives in Hot Pursuit&#8221; are important because her students return to her classroom with questions.</p><p>&#8220;Our students in first grade don&#8217;t know a lot about electrical safety at this time,&#8221; Yuhas said. &#8220;Programs like this and the entertainers that are up there are teaching them about electricity in a fun and amusing way. It&#8217;s not just from a textbook or a piece of paper, it&#8217;s seeing it in a show and understanding what&#8217;s going on through play and through drama.&#8221;</p><p>Student Xhaiden Felizsosa took a few things away from Tuesday&#8217;s event. He learned to keep electrified items three feet away from curtains and to stay away from transformers because they&#8217;re electrified and he can&#8217;t play with them. He was also entertained by the performance&#8217;s villain, the fire hazard fan Fire Fly.</p><p>&#8220;It was good!&#8221; Felizsosa said. &#8220;I liked the Fire Fly. He was funny.&#8221;</p><p>The Fire Fly was played by Andrew Jacobsen, a 21 year-old member of NTC performing with the company for the first time. Jacobsen will go straight from his 10-location run with &#8220;Safety Detectives in Hot Pursuit&#8221; to &#8220;Conservation Station,&#8221; an NTC show in South Carolina. He&#8217;ll perform in that show until January.</p><p>&#8220;I think it gives children a lot of emphasis on learning and safety &#8212; not only here in school but also at home,&#8221; said Hal Gabriel, Heights-Murray Elementary School principal. &#8220;It&#8217;s a very exciting program because it&#8217;s for kindergarten through sixth grade, so we&#8217;re able to get all the children involved. Sometimes we have programs that emphasize the higher grades, but this program seems to hit all levels.&#8221;</p><p>Gabriel said the school tries to schedule four or five similar programs every school year to teach students lessons that traditional coursework isn&#8217;t equipped to cover.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very important for our young kids to be able to take lessons outside the walls of school,&#8221; Gabriel said. &#8220;Take it where they need to do it &#8212; outside in society.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Ryan Bergman, left, and Andrew Jacobsen, players with the National Theatre for Children&#8217;s production of &#8216;Safety Detectives in Hot Pursuit,&#8217; utilize storytelling to educate students audience about electrical safety. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_Safety-Detectives.jpg</photo0><caption0>Ryan Bergman, left, and Andrew Jacobsen, players with the National Theatre for Children&#8217;s production of &#8216;Safety Detectives in Hot Pursuit,&#8217; utilize storytelling to educate students audience about electrical safety. </caption0><photoCredit0>Submitted photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Gene Axton</p><p>gaxton@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>The students of Heights/Murray Elementary School were taught about electrical safety Tuesday, but what can parents do to make their homes safer? PPL Regional Affairs Director Alana Roberts had some electrical safety tips for parents as well:</p><p>1. Be careful in the kitchen</p><p>2. Do not use damaged electrical cords because they&#8217;re dangerous</p><p>3. Keep space heaters at least three feet away from anything that can burn</p><p>4. Remember that water and electricity don&#8217;t mix</p><p>5. Stay away from power lines and electrical equipment</p><p>6. Don&#8217;t put anything on top of light bulbs because they get hot</p><p>7. Make sure all smoke alarms in your home are working and check the batteries at least once a year</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Gene Axton at 570-991-6121 or on Twitter @TLArts</p></shirttailMeta></div>

PPL Electric Utilities and theater group team up to teach Heights-Murray Elementary students about electrical safety