Give Kids A Smile  (GKAS)

GKAS is a volunteer service that was conducted and organized by the New York City College of Technology’s Dental Hygiene Department in February of 2024. I was created as a way to serve the community pediatric population. Children ages 5-12 were allowed to receive free dental treatment, hearing, and vision screenings.  As a student, this was a great learning experience and my very first time performing dental prophylaxis on a pediatric patient. I was able to place sealants, apply fluoride varnish, and teach my patient how to brush properly.  Although I initially faced some challenges when working on a patient with mixed dentition for the first time I was able to redeem myself and quickly identify primary teeth for my following pediatric patient.  My participation in Give Kids a Smile allowed me to not only give back to the community but to take what I learned in the classroom and implement it on a live pediatric patient.

Service Learning Project

On March 6th, 2024, myself and a few classmates visited Hunters Point Community Middle School to educate students on the importance of oral health.  Visual aids, such as videos, photos, and 3D-printed tooth models were given out to the students during our fun interactive presentations. We were able to capture the student’s attention and even played an interactive trivia game with the students to test how much they learned from our demonstration. I was shocked to see how we the children were able to follow the brushing and flossing techniques that we taught them as well. The objective of this project was to motivate children to begin practicing good oral hygiene now so that they wouldn’t accumulate caries, gingivitis, and periodontal disease as adults.