Fact Sheets
Effective crisis planning begins with leadership at the top. Top leadership helps set the policy agenda, secure funds, and bring the necessary people together across agencies.
Crisis plans should not be developed in a vacuum. Good planning can enhance all school functions. It is a natural extension of ongoing school and community efforts to create safe learning environments.
Ensure that your school’s safety plan incorporates cbrNe response information. This would allow for enhanced response capabilities in the event of an accident or terrorist incident.
Schools and districts should open the channels of communication well before a crisis. Relationships need to be built in advance so that emergency responders are familiar with the school. It is important that they understand how the district and schools will respond in a crisis.
Crisis plans should be developed in partnership with other community groups, including law enforcement, fire safety officials, emergency medical services, as well as health and mental health professions. These individuals know what to do in an emergency and can be helpful in the development of a school safety plan.
A common vocabulary is necessary. It is critical that school staff and emergency responders know each other’s terminology.
Schools should tailor district crisis plans to meet individual school needs. A plan should not be one document. It should be a series of documents targeted to the various audiences (i.e. detailed response guide for planner, flip charts for teachers, a crisis response toolbox for administrators and wallet cards containing evacuation routes for bus drivers).
Plan for the diverse needs of children and staff. Schools need to address the needs of children or staff with physical, sensory, motor, developmental or mental challenges or limited English proficiency.
Provide teachers and staff with ready access to the plan so they can understand its components and act on them. People need to know what to do in advance to get them through an incident and to help alleviate panic and anxiety.
Training and practice are essential for the successful implementation of crisis plans. Drills allow your school to evaluate what works and what needs to be improved.
Crisis plans are living documents. They need to be reviewed and revised regularly. Documenting all actions during and after an event helps in identifying the strengths and weak¬nesses of a plan.
Silence Supports Violence: Bystanders Have the Power to Make a Difference
MOST Students iN a classroom Or School do NOT bully Others regularly and are not victimized by bullies. A common misconception about student ‘bystanders’ is that they typically remain neutral or try to support the victim when they see bullying occurring. Unfortunately, the truth is that students who observe bullying are much more likely to encourage or assist the bully than to attempt to help the victim!
Bystanders have The Power to help stop bullying. Bullying may occur to a few students, but most students know about it. When bystanders don’t help, the hurtful – even violent – behavior is reinforced. Student onlookers need to understand that they are responsible for their actions when they witness a bullying incident. In particular, bystanders should know they will face negative consequences if they decide to join a bully in taunting or teasing a victim, cheer the bully on, laugh at the bullying incident or otherwise take part in the bullying.
Doing Nothing is really doing Something – silence supports violence. Share this concept with your students. We want to motivate bystanders to take action.
- Bystanders are present most of the time (85%) when there is a bully episode on the playground or in the classroom.
- Most kids feel uncomfortable witnessing bullying, but very few intervene.
- 60% of the time when peers step in, the bullying stops within 10 seconds!
Conduct a Thorough building-wide assessment to determine the extent of bullying in your school. Use multiple methods to collect information. Consider administering staff surveys and anonymous student surveys, facilitating student and parent focus groups on the topic of bullying, analyzing the pattern of student disciplinary referrals to see if bullying patterns emerge, having adults observe and record bullying behaviors in less-supervised settings such as the cafeteria and on the playground, etc. Collect this information to identify significant patterns of bullying (for example, where and when bullying happens to occur most frequently; which students appear to engage in bullying behavior and which are victimized by bullies; etc.).
Teach inclusion. The essence of bullying is exclusion; forcing one child to be isolated, apart from the group. A key anti-bullying message is that everyone needs to be included. Given time and little encouragement by a skillful teacher, children will come to this conclusion themselves. When they do, they realize that they have the power to combat bullying by looking after each other, so no child is left out.
Name-calling and harassment are a BIG deal. Most fights start with seemingly minor incidents. Many times bystanders become immune to derogatory names or activities and the ha¬rassment becomes the norm. Support No-Name-Calling practices in your policies and procedures. For more information, go to: www.nonamecallingweek.org.
Reporting bullying is NOT tattling. Tattling is when a student tells an adult what another student did simply to get him or her into trouble. Speaking up is when a student talks to an adult about what another student is doing because that student’s actions are unsafe or might hurt another person. Speaking up is helping. If you have tried to help and it hasn’t worked, or the situation is so bad danger is immediate, you need to tell an adult right away.
Establish a Policy for contacting the parent(s) of a student who has engaged in bullying. At the parent conference, school staff should attempt to enlist the parent to work with them to stop the student’s bullying. If the parent denies that a problem exists or refuses to cooperate to end the child’s bullying behavior, the parent should be told clearly that the school will monitor the child’s behavior closely and will take appropriate disciplinary steps if future bullying incidents occur.