Safety Patrol

Need of Education

It is a well known fact that “knowledge is the power”. The education plays a vital role, especially in the developing countries, to eradicate poverty and bring out the social changes which are beneficial for the social welfare. Education can be considered as a ladder which you can use in order to get rid of ignorance, poverty and oppression. The children as well as youth of a country need to be provided with the proper and adequate knowledge so that they can lead a comfortable life and have a safe future.

Studies have shown that countries with effective and productive educational system are more prosperous as compared to the others. Like food, water and shelter education is also considered as the basic entity of life. As food and shelter is vital for health and body respectively, likewise education is essential for the development of your mind. Education is all about putting your potentials effectively and makes the best out of it. Education enables an individual to be a right thinker, it tells when, where and how to make a decision that will be favorable for you. As the ultimate aim of education is towards the development of an individual, such development should gradually transform towards the development of society.

Education is characterized as the only aspect that can unite a country and its people as a developed nation. So if a nation is willing to progress towards the path of glory and success, then it is essential to implement an efficacious educational system. It is education only that can assist you in developing and promoting good habits, awareness among other atrocious existences like terrorism, diseases and corruption. There are various means of providing education; technology with the blend of mass media has proved a better and effective option in this aspect. It is education only reinforces the strength of an individual.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Developing country, Economic development, Education

Education Improves With Parental Involvement

Working parents often find themselves lacking the time to get involved with their children’s education. However, there are a large number of working mothers who do manage to take out the time for their child’s progress in school. Those parents who get involved can actually help their children perform better at school.

Benefits of Parents’ Involvement

It has been observed that when parents get involved with their children’s education it results in better grades, improved social skills, less absenteeism, assured graduation from high school and admission into a good college on behalf of the children.

Often responsibilities at work do not allow parents to get involved in this manner. What is essential is a balance between work and their children.

How Working Parents Can Work Out a Solution

Parents should check the child’s school bag, diary, books and other items to keep abreast with what the child is learning everyday. They must also talk to the child about daily happenings at school. If direct involvement in school parties is not possible, send something to make your child feel you are interested. Try and spend at least some time together each evening reading a book and talking about it or about other subjects. Keep a track of their homework, at the end of each day. Lastly, instead of the television ruling the ‘together time’, let it be spent in more productive activities.

Involvement in School Activities

Parents must make it a point to attend Parent-Teacher meetings, annual school functions, debates, conferences and concerts that may take place in the child’s school. These are great ways of interacting with the teachers and making your child feel you care.

Conclusion

Most busy parents find it difficult to balance family life with work. However, taking out time for one’s children and their education should be a priority in the agenda.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: Child, Education, Parent

Developing a student safety checklist

It is important to understand the risks that students might be exposed to while studying at school campuses. School safety is not just the onus of teachers, and parents. It is the priority of all people. School safety is a very frightening word. A school is most often than not seen as a harmless place. But words like school safety and student risk management give it other connotations.

If you are a parent who would like to ensure maximum school safety for your child, then you have to take the following checklist with you the next time you go to meet your child’s teachers. You can also invite other parents to take part in this exercise. Or you can even sit down with your child and your child’s friends to make the checklist.Here’s how your checklist should go…

1) Ask the school, how they prioritize school safety. Is it the first position, second position or which position?

2) Does the school have processes for disaster management?

3) Does the school keep a track of all the unsafe incidents that have taken place at the school? Do they have analytic reports on the same?

4) Does the school have prevention and cure plan? Do they have measures to prevent a catastrophe as well as come out of it?

5) Check the school’s safety list. What do they place as unsafe? Do they factor-in all the possibilities of danger or is it not a comprehensive safety list?

6) Do they have special point of contact or an office for emergencies? Does the school have specialized and trained personnel to deal with emergency situations?

7) Does the school provide counseling help for violent students?

Have they any certification to ascertain themselves as a safe education provider?

These are some of the checklist items that parents can have at PTO meetings. Some of these might help schools to understand what they are lacking in.

Filed Under: Education, School Tagged With: Checklist, Parent, Student

Earthquake proofing school buildings

In countries like Japan, Earthquakes are frequent. Japan introduced Earthquake proof standards for buildings. The Japanese government is now actively promoting Earthquake resistant buildings for schools. A lot of catastrophic events have happened in Japan. 1995’s Hanshin-Awaji is one of them. During the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake incident school buildings were destroyed. This was at a time when there were no Earthquake proof standards for buildings.

Following this event, a law was introduced by the Japanese government to make a standard for buildings to be Earthquake resistant. Another law was passed to promote research and development in this area. It also made provisions for inducting funds from external sources for supplementing the development of the Earthquake proof building technology.

In countries like Japan such developments are taking place. It is time for other countries to follow this approach as well. Talking about school safety, an important aspect of it is also the buildings that students use. By making Earthquake resistance buildings, a potential catastrophe can be avoided.

Earthquake resistant school buildings can be made by retrofitting buildings using diagonally crossed braces, and flexible pipes. Studies show that the focus of Earthquake proofing buildings should be to concentrate on the sideways movement of the building. Most buildings during an Earthquake tend to sway sideways. By blocking this movement a potential building collapse could be avoided.

There is also a theory be scientists who have discovered vertical movements of a building under an Earthquake. All these movements come down to how the structure of the building is reinforced. The way the columns and beams of the building are designed is the way it makes the building behaves.

A new research suggests the partitioning of the building from the landmass with another cushioning interface material. By doing this the building is not affected by the seismic waves generated from the Earth, since most of it is absorbed by the cushioning interface.

Filed Under: School Tagged With: Building, Earthquake, Japan

School Inequality, How it Happens and How to Prevent It

Phenomena such as gentrification and white flight have made it difficult for some schools to offer their students educations that properly prepare them for college or careers. The negative effects of gentrification and white flight, however, can often be countered with reliable property management.

How Gentrification Affects Schools

Gentrification often occurs when professionals move into a poor area of town. These individuals and young families are attracted to low housing prices in poorer areas. Over time, though, they begin to make more money in their careers. Instead of leaving the neighborhood, the professionals spend money fixing up their homes and attracting new stores.

This sounds like a good thing for the neighborhood, but it can have some negative consequences. Gentrification often occurs on select streets or sides of a neighborhood. Over time, the neighborhood becomes divided in half. School systems suffer when this happens because the wealthier side of the neighborhood pays more property tax that support good schools. This takes away resources from the poorer side, thus making the schools less effective for students and the area’s educational system as a whole.

How White Flight Affects Schools

White flight has a more direct negative effect on schools. White flight is a phenomenon that involves affluent white families moving to suburbs. This often leaves behind empty houses that soon turn into slums. As the area becomes more depressed by poor housing standards and low property taxes, the schools start to suffer. Since they cannot afford to hire the best teachers or purchase equipment for classes, the schools cannot provide good educational opportunities to their students.

Preventing Inequalities with Planned Property Management

Property is at the heart of these problems. A reliable Mesa property management company can help ensure that buildings and properties remain in good condition. This prevents the area from slipping into a localized depression that negatively affects schools. Charter schools and larger variety within school programs are other options used by some systems.

Filed Under: Education, General Tagged With: Charter school, Education, School

What to do when a gun-wielding student goes berserk

It is one of the most unfortunate incidents that can happen in schools. It’s such a scary feeling to be in the middle of a shootout at school. It helps to have some information on how to react in such situations.

1 When in suspicion, be alert

When you are suspicious about a student’s movements, you have to stay alert. Take the help of some seniors and ask them to intervene without mentioning your name. By doing this a possible danger could be averted. If a student is bringing explosive materials or sharp objects to school, then this is an indication of a possible danger. If a student is practicing shooting at other students, even this could be reported. Such behavior is not appropriate in a school environment.

2 Schools might have procedures for this. Ask your teachers.

Schools will definitely have procedures for disaster management and emergencies. Ask your teachers to produce such documents. You can take note of what to do in case a school shootout happens. There could be some rooms where you might take refuge along with others. There could be secret exits, or even emergency exits that allow students to free themselves from the school premises as quickly as possible.

3 Always be alert

When you hear commotion in the distance, don’t be sitting down. Get up and see what it is. If you see the gun-wielding assassin in the distance, try to run away from the person. Do not try to become a hero by confronting this person unless you can trap this person without any harm to yourself or others. If you find a safe exit, let others know of this as well.

4 Don’t be in groups

Don’t be in groups. The more you spread out, the more your chances of getting saved from the bullets. Groups will create more target-space for the shooter. Try to avoid this as far as possible.

Filed Under: Education, First Aid Tagged With: School, Student, Teacher

Ensuring students play safe on playgrounds

Playgrounds are places where a lot of injury can happen to students. Game activities provide a lot of relief and recreation to students. Without such facilities students will get bored and easily slip themselves into mediocrity. But while playgrounds provide an important activity for the overall development of the kid, they also need to be safe. You might have seen or heard about students hurting themselves while playing at school. Some of them might have broken their arms, or slipped and fallen down. These things will happen, but playground design can prevent this.

So what is playground design? Playground design in simple words is to design playgrounds so that they offer safe recreation and other physical activities to students. Playgrounds can be separated into distinct areas, where each area could be assigned to be used for a particular age group. For example, a playground for students between the age of 8 and fifteen need not have high parallel bars. Students can risk themselves to serious falls.

Grounds that are used to play hard sports like soccer can have short grass. Barren grounds are not advisable, as it not only risks the students to injuries, but is also not hygienic. A playground should have a supervisor who overlooks the activities of the students. This is particularly helpful in preventing unwanted injuries to kids playing on playgrounds.

Swimming pools are also part of physical instruction in some schools. Swimming pools must need the constant vigilance of swimming instructors. Students might get adventurous in swimming pools. In their creative comedies they might mock-drown other students. What was intended as a joke can take a serious turn. All this can be avoided by constant vigilance at areas where school students play.

A playground is an important aspect of the development of child’s personality. All students need to play at some point. Agreed some students might not take to playing, but they can equally be good at other non-physical activities.

Filed Under: School Tagged With: Playground, Student

How to prevent violence in students

So many massacres in schools have left teachers and parents dumbfounded. Schools previously considered a safe haven for children is now becoming a dangerous place. Parents, teachers and people in general are wondering on the solutions to the problems of student violence. How can student violence be prevented?

Adolescents commit a lot of murders. Most of it due to lack of understand of circumstances following such a drastic action, and off course raging hormones. In the United States alone, every year close to four thousand murders are being done by students studying in schools.

Murders in school are mostly done by students who have been cast away as failures in school. They are such students who would have been humiliated at school. Unable to withstand the humiliation of being an outcast at school they vent out their angst and anger by turning to violence.

So what to do to prevent such acts? Prevention is better than cure. Preventing such incidents will require early recognition of violence in students. If a student with such violent symptoms is found, steps can be taken to dissolve such acts through rehabilitation.

There are other harsh prevention methods like sending the student to prison or putting the student through community service punishments. Incarceration will subdue the student’s violent behavior. As the student turns sober in an incarcerated atmosphere, wisdom will also prevail.

The only way to change a violent student completely would be to change the way this student thinks and acts. A great deal of change can be induced if the atmosphere of this student is made as peaceful as possible. Stimulants to violence can be done away with. By doing this the student will slowly start looking inwards rather than outwards. This is the only path to real self-change.

Schools should have specific educational programs that concentrate on things like behavior, personality amongst other things. No threat should be taken lightly. Violent students can be the most merciless.

Filed Under: Education, School Tagged With: Murder, School, Violence

A Teacher’s Gift: Motivating Students

Students are always eager to learn. Since most of them are at an age when they are naturally curious about learning, it becomes easier for teachers to motivate them. Teachers have a greater role than teaching students. They should also motivate the students to do things that they are good at. A teacher is like a parent to students at school, in that they are responsible for instilling values in students.

There is no formulaic approach to motivating or inspiring students. IF there was one, then most students would have been motivated to pursue their dreams. There are plenty of things that influence a student’s ability to assimilate and learn. Even motivation is induced by a variety of factors. These factors may be internal, external or both. Motivation in students is nothing but the desire to excel in academics, or extra-curricular activities. It is also the burning desire to achieve excellence at a young age. Motivation is also the inclination to know more about the subject and devote more time to learning a subject. Motivated students show remarkable qualities of self-confidence, self-esteem, patience.

So what can teachers do to motivate students?

1 Give positive feedback about a student’s ability

By giving positive feedback about a student’s ability to the student, motivation can be seeded in this student. The student will be convinced about this unique ability and go all the way to pursue excellence in it.

2 Always make the students succeed

Inculcate a step-by-step approach to educating students. Don’t give assignments that are very easy to do or extremely difficult. Make the student feel successful after a completed assignment, and deservedly so.

3 Make things relevant to the student

When studying something, the student might not find personal relevance to the subject. The teacher can try to map aspects of this subject to how it may affect the student’s present or future life. This will enable the student to find purpose in any activity.

Filed Under: Education, School Tagged With: Motivation, Student, Teacher

Safety Measures to Take During Thunderstorms and Lightning

Tropical and sub-tropical regions are prone to thunderstorms on a daily basis. However, during hot summers, people living in moderate climates can experience them too. Whatever be the frequency or geographical location of the storms, one must be prepared for them and know what safety measures to take in case lightning or thunder strike.

How to Stay Prepared for Storm at Home

In order to be prepared for severe weather conditions, home owners should ensure some important items are close at hand. An NOAA weather radio that can sound an alarm in case of a storm must be kept at home. The push of a button can send a warning signal to residents and other residents of an area. It is also imperative to ensure a fully charged mobile phone is always at hand. It may be the only form of communication in the case of a disaster. A storm kit should be kept ready at all times by people living in such areas. Ideally, such a kit should include non-perishable food stuff, medicines, food for pets, batteries, torches, first aid material and any other essentials.

What to Do During a Thunderstorm and Lightning

To avoid injury or damage from thunderstorms and lightning, residents should bear several safety measures in mind. To avoid damage from lightning, all appliances must be unplugged. Cars should be moved into the safety of garages, or at least not be parked under trees. Electricity can travel through water, and therefore people must stay away from water and pipes during lightning. The telephone must not be used, since the wires could be struck by lightning. During a major thunderstorm, it is safer to remain in an inner room, and stay away from windows.