There are a number of aspects that fall under
the category of school safety, and it is important to teach students that they
are an integral part of the process and how they can effectively safeguard
themselves. Therefore, here are the three majors 21st Century safety
issues to address:
Physical Safety
The physical security of a place tends to cover
various aspects such as the school building, electrical safety, safety during
sports and other extra-curricular activities, laboratory safety, transportation
safety, and so much more. But when it comes to school safety, the primary
threat is access to students.
While it is crucial to have a regular CCTV
monitoring system, ventilated laboratories, transportation facilities, alarm
systems, and efficient water systems—all of which are just a few examples of common
safety measures, students also must be aware of their surroundings and teaching
them that propping doors open or not shutting them properly, leads to unsafe
conditions and real vulnerabilities for the learning environment.
Social Safety
This safety factor centers around how safe
students feel within their school. Are they surrounded by other students who
are well-behaved and will not do them any harm?
To properly address this issue, some safety and
social precautions you can take include teaching your students to appreciate
appropriate behavior and social skills for their age. You can also conduct
frequent sessions that guide students on how to deal with anger, fear, stress,
and other negative emotions to help them avoid developing bad habits such as
bullying, harassment, and the like.
Cyber Safety
Cybersecurity plays a vital role in ensuring the
safety of all students in a school. It is the ideal act to use internet
services safely without harming others or even yourself.
Through responsible means, using internet
services can be a productive experience. Hence, it is always prudent for
schools to block any sites that are irrelevant to students, teachers, and
schools, but it is equally important to instruct students how to use their
mobile phones, laptops, or other types of mobile devices responsibly and
consistently educate students on the safe use of technology.
The book "Education in a Violent World: A
Practical Guide to Keeping Our Kids Safe.", written by Dr. Steven Webb,
who is known internationally to be one of the top safety experts of our time,
identifies ways to stop violence before it occurs rather than just
concentrating on run, hide and fight as most trainings do. In reality, there is
so much that happens before a child ends up taking their own life or ends up
coming to school to commit violence. According to Webb’s research, he found
that cyberbullying, violent video games, sexting, over-prescribing drugs, etc.
are some of the common examples that tend to glorify violence and being aware
and educating children about the dangers is critical to violence prevention. In
addition to that, further factors contribute to a student’s depressive and
stressful mental capacities and teaching students and parents to identify the
indicators of this “downward spiral” is key in saving lives.