It’s the first week of summer, and while most of their peers are enjoying freedom from school, some Stickney students are getting a lesson in safety.

Members of the Forest View Police Department joined 36 students for a presentation on summer safety as part of the first week of Stickney’s Home School’s summer school program. The program this year has become a thematic one, focusing on “Safety for the Home and Community,” with an emphasis on community service.

“What they’re doing is learning their basics, but we’re trying to coordinate the topics we’re talking about into the reading or literacy work,” said Barbara Schumacher, a lead teacher in the program.

Since Home School’s theme for the summer is safety-related, teachers said many of the students’ readings and math problems will pertain to avoiding strangers, fire safety or health.

Summer school will be in session for four weeks this summer, two in June and another two in August.

The officers, Marco Perez and Russ DeLude, said it is particularly important that children are aware of their surroundings and its potential dangers during the summer months, when school is out and supervision is less constant.

Students said they felt safer after meeting with the officers.

“I learned not to talk to strangers and to lock all the doors if you’re left home alone,” said Angela Delatorre, who is going into fourth grade. “If a stranger comes up to me, I’ll tell him no and start running.”

Delatorre’s teacher, Quincy Jenkins, said the new approach to summer school enables instructors to make lesson plans more interactive and exciting for students.

“We have the opportunity to have many different activities for them so it’s more fun and students look forward to coming each day, which is what is unique about what we’re doing here,” Jenkins said. “Summer provides us with the unique time to teach social and other unique behaviors, other than just academic skills. It gives them a nice focus, outside of academics, and is a cooperative effort among the students to decide what community means to them.”

The program also involves a strong emphasis on community service within the students. Home’s students will be collecting glasses for the blind, Schumacher said, something which teachers said will teach the students a lesson of another kind.

“Service learning and having the aspect of community service in the classroom are up and coming things in education,” said Jenkins. “It gives them respect for themselves and for other people and teaches them important things you can’t learn just in the classroom. Community service teaches them another aspect of what life is about.”