Besides providing quality education, a school’s primary responsibility is to ensure students’ safety. School safety measures refer to activities to protect students from violence and harm such as theft, Bullying, and illegal drug abuse inside the school premises.
Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels
These safety rules help lessen hatred and hostility among students and give them a secure and friendly environment to study.
Therefore, security for schools should maintain an appropriate balance between the need to be secure without creating an intimidating, environment for students.
School teachers and administrators must guarantee their students a safe environment to allow more creativity and productivity in students’ minds. When students feel comfortable and safe, they can learn better and explore new things. On the other hand, fear of being harassed or harmed can severely weaken learning outcomes. It may lead to low attendance and high drop-out rates.
Moreover, Freud’s trauma theory states that troublesome childhood experiences can adversely affect adulthood. Therefore, as educators, you must create healthy experiences for students to help them live as successful and satisfied adults. That said, listed below are a few school safety tips to help you create a healthy and safe learning experience for students.
Become informed
You can inform yourself of ways to bolster school safety by acquiring specific education. For example, an MSE focusing on crisis management and trauma can empower you to help students deal with challenging situations. Fortunately, you can enroll in an online degree and gain the necessary expertise via a flexible learning experience. By completing the program, you will be able to offer mental support to students experiencing emotional stress and help them overcome it. Moreover, you will learn to develop and implement an effective crisis management plan to tackle students’ threats at school.
Keep revising the school safety plans
Designing a school safety plan is not a one-time task to complete. It is good to make a detailed school safety plan, but it is better to keep updating it. Review the daily incidents happening in school, even if they are few. And then revise your plan to deal with those incidents effectively. Outline what steps educators must take to reduce the impact of a crisis at school.
A 2019 study by the National Center for Education Statistics suggested more students feared being harmed and attacked at school than outside. This statistic suggests current school safety plans are not effective enough because students feel unsafe inside the premises. So, safety plans must also include strict crime prevention policies against perpetrators of violence. If such people go unnoticed, violence will become mainstream. This will have detrimental effects on victims.
Make the safety policies known
Your school safety plan should be well-known to all stakeholders. Ensure you display the safety policies on the noticeboards in the hallways and classrooms. This way, it will be visible to everyone. Use colorful charts, videos, and other attractive media to stress the importance of the school safety plan. You can also distribute pamphlets among teachers and students that point out the safety rules everyone must follow in school. Using creative ways of spreading such information can help attract students’ attention.
Moreover, the more attention you give to propagating your safety plan, the more you can ensure strict implementation of the policies. You will provide students with confidence that ensuring their safety is your school’s utmost concern. You will also alert bullies and potential perpetrators of school violence.
Encourage your students to walk in groups
It would be best to make students realize they are most vulnerable when alone. There are high chances of bullies following their targets to their homes and attacking them if they are alone. So, encourage students to walk with their friends while coming to school or returning home. Students In groups can also help each other out in the unfortunate event of one of them getting hurt.
Discourage bullying
The National Center for Education Statistics unveiled another shocking statistic in 2016 regarding bullying cases in schools. According to data, more than 750,000 cases of victimization were reported in 2016 by students aged 12-18. The study also revealed most bullying occurred at places with the most negligible supervision.
Bullying affects the mental and physical well-being of the victims. It also trains the perpetrators to become villains in life. Therefore, you must create safety rules that can keep everyone safe from the effects of bullying. You can teach your students ways to deal with bullies. You can also put security cameras in less crowded areas of the school to detect any such activity on time. Also, it would be best to employ a friendlier approach to tackle this menace. You can do so by avoiding labels such as ‘victims’ or ‘bullies,’ as these words can torment students for a long time. Instead, teach them the benefits of living in a positive school environment so they can come out of the vicious web of bullying.
Conclusion
Developing an effective school safety plan is time-consuming, especially when considering multiple factors. Still, having a strategy is essential to provide students with a safe place to learn, grow, and thrive. This article mentions a few tips you can employ to ensure students’ safety on campus. It would be best that all staff members, students, and parents know the school’s safety measures. Last but not least, you may also employ the services of a school counselor to help students navigate mental health issues.
Related Posts:
