Teaching Children About Dental Health

Garrett wrote “Partnering with my dentist, I taught two classes of preschoolers in Pacific University’s Early Learning Program about their teeth and how to practice safe and healthy dental hygiene. I also provided the children with dental hygiene supplies and proposed future presentations at a local elementary school.”

When asked what he accomplished, Garrett listed a number of things:

• I gave preschoolers a base knowledge of their teeth.
• I promoted good dental hygiene habits for children of the future generation.
• I improved my public speaking and presentation giving skills by overcoming my introverted tendencies.
• I learned to reach out to those in my community whom I have never communicated with before.
• I stared a project that I can continue in the coming years.

Garrett’s Tips for Future Students:

• Someone doing the same project should know that communicating with schools via email is slow so they should set aside a large response window or use a more direct form of communication.
• Finding a place to give a presentation can be difficult (especially during covid) given the target audience (children) so finding a place that will host you should be done early on.
• The best people to contact are principals or similar positions because they directly communicate with teachers and higher ups that will grant you access.
• It is important to make sure that your presentation matches the target audience. For example: preschoolers learn how to get rid of the sugar bugs while 5th or 6th graders can learn about the anatomy of a tooth.
• Avoid a boring presentation because it will be less memorable and therefore less useful to the listeners. Interact as much as possible.
• This project is likely best done alone as it could possibly be difficult to find enough stuff for two people to do.
• An improvement to my project would be reaching more people. This could be done by visiting more classrooms or setting up a bigger event. The presentations are not terribly difficult, and I believe the quality would only improve with volume and practice.