At the end of the 16-17 school year, we were eager to reflect on our Core Curriculum Lesson Plans and assess the effectiveness of the Safety Days. The safety days were initially designed to respond to the overwhelming number of behavior reports concerning behavior online, and with the understanding that all students would be given their own laptop and therefore would have greater access to the internet and would need to understand the many legal and moral consequences of being digital citizens. Drug Safety day was developed to respond to the growing opioid epidemic and served as background information for the state’s design challenge. Personal safety day became more and more necessary when we looked at the behavior reports as well as the needs assessment which showed that students wanted help in learning how to resolve conflicts, getting along with friends and others, as well as the amount of students who either were bullied or who admitted to bullying behaviors. Not only did these safety days directly address our goal of reducing behavior reports, it also indirectly related to our first two goals of reducing absences and improving grades. It was critical to us to include the entire school in each of these lessons in order to promote a school wide culture of safety, respect, and awareness.
Although we had one vision for the personal safety day, the day wound up looking differently. Initially, we wanted to show an unreleased documentary focusing on a lawsuit from the victims of human trafficking. We contacted the producers and arranged to receive a copy of the documentary. In screening it, and a subsequent CNN program, we discovered they were not developmentally appropriate for our students. Instead, we looked at popular culture to assess what our students regularly accepted as normal. We created a playlist on youtube and designed a set of questions for each class to look at the assumptions and biases present in the media as well as interpersonal relationships amongst friends, families and significant others. The questions were designed for each teacher to allow the discussion to develop naturally based on the responses in each group.
We administered a pre and post survey to assess the students’ impressions of each day and how effective the lessons were in imparting information and changing mindsets. Cyber Safety day data shows that the students reported increased understanding in the risks and legal ramifications of their online behavior and the bystander role in bullying. For Drug Safety day, students reported a greater understanding of addiction, the consequences of drug addiction for users and their families, and the legal consequences. After Personal Safety day, students reported an increase in their understanding about human trafficking, signs of an unhealthy relationship, and the ability to defend themselves.
Although we consider each of these days a success, we would make adjustments. First, we would administer a pre-survey at the start of the year over the three topics and create sessions to respond to the specific gaps in education our students show. We would also assess at the end of the school year to see any long-term impact.
Although our speaker from the Federal Trade Commission had useful information, the students did not appear to respond well to the presentational style; instead, we would recruit a speaker who could address the more urgent needs that our specific population reported. We would also increase the lead-in to each of the safety days to activate schema and build background information before each of the safety days. After the personal safety day we would have our WEB leaders and Peer Mediators go into E/I classrooms to teach students conflict resolution to reinforce the lessons of the day.
When we look at the implementation of days in comparison to each other, our council felt that the drug safety day had the greatest long-term impact for the students because the design challenge that followed allowed students to work with the information over a long period of time and collaborate with their peers. This project-based learning is an aspect that would be an incredible supplement to our other safety days; as a STEM school and our commitment to a STEM based counseling vision, we feel that this kind of learning gives our students the strongest foundation to be critical-thinking problem solvers who develop innovative solutions through collaboration. Giving our students to work with the topic and create a real-world product is a key feature of our STEM education.