Conquering disaster

Fifteen students earn FEMA certification

This FEMA certification allows students to help communities after natural disaster strikes.

Ariana Vasquezz, Staff Writer
April 30, 2021

Fifteen students earned the Federal Emergency Management Agency certification; this will help them be educated for when they need to respond to natural disasters.

“The certificate is the IS (independent study) 700 which is a class a lot of first responders take,” law enforcement teacher Jason Gonzalez said. “It’s based on disaster management, so it goes into a variety of different types of scenarios.”

To earn their FEMA certification, the students went over material with slideshows, power points, videos, and in-class training.

“I gave a practice test to the students, and I told them to go ahead and take this practice test based on everything that we went over,” Gonzalez said. “The beauty of the real test is that if you fail you can take it again.”

Students can take the test as many times as they need until they can pass it. After spring break, Gonzalez told his students they had three days to complete the test. Once they passed the test, they got an email from FEMA that gave them an official certificate.

“If [students] are going into a first responder class, [the certificate is] something they are going to have to have [in] the medical field, law enforcement, and the military,” Gonzalez said. “By getting it right now, they are getting early exposure to the content and material.”

When students get the FEMA certification it’s something they can have in their resume, application and scholarships.

“It’s something that you have right there and can be able to say ‘I was able to earn this, I was able to achieve this’, and it gives students knowledge to do [emergency management] work,” Gonzalez said.

The students who earned the certification are:

Federal Law Enforcement & Protective Services