Being prepared for emergency disasters requires a lot of planning ahead, especially if you live in an area where disasters are known. Professionals in early childhood environments have to be prepared for any and all disasters, whether they are in a disaster area or not. Disasters are not only limited to those that are caused by nature.
Disasters happen almost every day in the world. Let’s look at disasters that are caused by humans for example. In my opinion a human related disaster can never be too prepared for. If an early childhood environment is in danger due to a shooter on campus. The first thing to do in such situation is to remain calm and call for help or call out the code so someone can call for help. Teacher should have a place where they should go in case of such emergency. They should have emergency contact numbers at hand to contact parents and let them know what is going on and updates on the safety of their students.
To assess the risk of a school shooting happening in my area would be to research the community to see if passed incidents of this nature has happened in the past. There are complication that could arise such as phone lines being cut, media attention, and panic. Media attention can put the entire school in jeopardy by sending out information that has not been confirmed by law officials. This could cause parents to panic and crowd the school and interrupting officials from assessing the problem.
Another disaster would be a fire in the building. Assessing the risk of a building fire takes professional advice. Contact a local building inspector to make sure the building is up to standards. One could do some risk assessing themselves by making sure all plugs look safe, make sure they do not see any lose or hanging wires, classroom is free of clutter and papers as this could make it hard to evacuate. Complication that could arise is panic. If the teachers panic the students will also panic, as they do look at the teacher for instruction and safety.
To be prepared for such incident the teacher should follow the evacuation plan the school has in place. The teacher should enforce routine fire drills to prepare the students in case there is a real fire. Emergency contact should be at hand, the name of each student so that the teacher can do a role call. To keep the families involved with their children that is in their care. The teacher should ask the parents for more than one contact number in case of such emergency. The teacher should have a cell phone designated for this type of emergency with the parents name stored. The teacher can then use those contacts to contact parent/caregiver of the situation and assure them that their child/ren is safe. Once all contacts have been made the teacher can tell the parents that they will be updated on regular intervals and not to panic and crowd the school as this could cause problems.
References
Robertson, C. (2007). Safety, Nutrition, and Health in Early Education (4th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Pamela....You are so right when you said that teacher must be prepared for any and all emergencies....I know as a parent I would like to think that the teachers know what to do if my child were in need of emergency care.
ReplyDeleteHi Pamela,
ReplyDeleteI found this post really interesting as you mentioned something that I didn't think would cause a problem. You mentioned that crowding the school can cause problems, and you are right about that. As a parent I don't know how exactly I would react to a shooting in school, as it has happened in Colorado a few times and the thought of it fears me. But I like to here your input on what parents should do to not crowd the school but be there to help.