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Fortville Elementary School teacher saves student from choking

FORTVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — The quick thinking of an elementary school teacher helped to save a student’s life.

The third grade teacher at Fortville Elementary told 24-Hour News 8 she’s never experienced anything like this before in her 13 years of teaching.

Amy Hoeppner was walking her students back from lunch the other day when one of her students began choking.

“I always wanted to be a teacher my whole life, there wasn’t anything else that I really thought about doing,” she said.

The school week is over for Amy Hoeppner and her students, but something happened on Wednesday that she will never forget.

“We had proceeded down to right about in front of the gym and I just paused right there to allow the line to catch up,” she said.

She was picking up her class from lunch when she noticed something was wrong with one of her students.

“I heard him start to kind of choke,” she said. “Now somehow I was aware that he had been eating celery.”

Mrs. Hoeppner said that student was Abram. He was standing right next to her.

“I just kind of put it together real fast and wasn’t sure, are you okay and he couldn’t respond and he had his hands over his neck like this and was making choking sounds. So, I just did the Heimlich real fast.”

And it only took one try. Mrs. Hoeppner said she’s glad her student was okay.

“I asked him if he wanted to go back to the room and he insisted, no I’m fine I want to go back to the room,” she said.

The school provided a picture of the two taken right after the incident.

“We’re always trained to know what to do in case something should happen, so it worked out I knew what to do because I had been shown how to do it,” she said.

Mrs. Hoeppner is now encouraging others to learn how to do the Heimlich just in case.

“I think often time I hear that it’s more times adults than a child. You’re just never going to know when you need that skill and really, it wasn’t that hard to do it,” she said.

Abram’s mom met with Mrs. Hoeppner and thanked her for being so attentive.

Mrs. Hoeppner said she doesn’t consider herself a hero.

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