We’ve All Heard Them
Every flight we board, we are always reminded of the thorough safety tips from the flight crew. School safety champions may have some takeaways here. The captain makes the passenger announcement “we request your undivided attention to the flight attendants while they demonstrate the safety procedures”. It is followed by a demonstration from the crew with a smile. Each and every take-off, the attendants do a sincere job of demonstrating the safety procedure treating every passenger like a first-time traveler. What could schools learn from the discipline that is ingrained in the airline’s transportation safety process in order to improve school safety protocols?
Regular travelers know where the life vests are, when oxygen masks come down, and where to find the exit routes. Yet, the flight attendants educate the entire plane to make sure every individual is prepared to respond in an emergency situation. Nobody complains about these protocols and can almost recite them back word for word. How can we emulate this scenario when it comes to safety preparedness in our schools today?
The most successful method we can take away is repetition. Child safety should be practiced every day. School administrators and parents must take the initiative and be the captains of these efforts. That means their top priority should be educating their children about safety in a way they can easily understand and retain to improve their school safety protocols.
School’s typically have a thorough safety checklist for school safety protocols that are readily available to guardians and parents. Starting with daily safety tips like “Stranger Danger“,”Social Media Safety Practices” to safety drills for fire, lockdown, medical emergency. With these tools, it just takes a passionate captain and crew to make sure our children can learn in a safe environment.
There is definitely a great overlap between flight safety and school safety. Here is a quick safety list to help you introduce some of these safety protocols into your home and classroom.
- Always maintain an active count of children checked-in on campus or to an event.
- Verify that each and every classroom is in compliance with the standard safety requirements every day.
- Moderate and update your safety checklists to be best prepared for an emergency.
- Make sure a telephone is always readily available.
- At the end of the day make sure that all of the children have been checked out of the campus or event.
- Keep an open line of communication between all of your staff and parents.
School Safety is a never-ending challenge. We all are painfully aware of the consequences when something goes wrong like we saw last week in South Florida. These practices might not help solve every issue, but help save more lives. We at Pikmykid want to do our part to prevent such catastrophes, or at least minimize their outcome when they cannot be completely stopped. As an Edtech company helping school administrators, and a group of concerned citizens, we want every school to be SAFER. We want to help the school staff and parents! Please contact us today to discuss the support we can provide to keep children safe.
