How Will You Keep Kids Safe Reflection?

The role of the teacher in keeping kids safe expands far beyond the school. It is our

responsibility as teachers to keep an eye on all students in our school, not just the students you

teach. My plan for keeping students safe includes standing outside my door and monitoring

hallway action as well as greeting every student that walks by or into my door, I also plan to

create class social media pages that all the students can be a part of and their actions can be

monitored. I think it is really important to create relationships with your students because if you

know your students well you can figure out if a behavior they are exhibiting is normal or if it is a

cry for help.

My first step in my plan is to greet every student at the door. This is not only a great way

to build relationships with your students but it is also a great way to monitor the activity taking

place in the hallways. You might not necessarily hear or witness things in your classroom but

you might if you stand out in the hallway and immerse yourself in the culture of the school

hallway. This may be required under my school’s action plan. However, from what you have

said in class, not every teacher is where they should be at all times during the day. A situation

like this actually happened at my field experience. A teacher wasn’t present in the classroom,

when they should’ve been because they had students in their classroom. He wasn’t there and

during that time one student assaulted another student. The parents were furious and could’ve

pressed charges against the school and that teacher because they should’ve been present and this

situation wouldn’t have happened. I don’t know what happened to this teacher but the rest of the

teachers at the school had a meeting with the principal, where they were informed that they had

to have supervision in their classroom when students were present.

 Another step would be to create social media pages for my class that students will follow.

This isn’t exactly realistic because most Elementary students will not have social media.

However, if I were a middle or high school teacher, this would be a way to get students involved

in the class even outside of the classroom. My teacher in high school did something similar to

this. She created a twitter page for the science class and we had to follow that page and also re-

tweet or tweet biology facts or jokes to this teacher. Because we were following this page, she

was able to see anything we posted or re-tweeted. This was a good way to get students thinking

about biology when they weren’t present in the classroom but it was also a sneaky way of

monitoring the behaviors of students on social media without giving away that you are

monitoring them.

Another way to keep kids safe in your school or classroom is to create relationships with

them. The quickest way to do this is by communicating and creating a consistency, which will

lead to high level of trust in you. If you create a stable bond with students built on trust they will

tell you anything. One thing that you mentioned in class is that you become almost invisible in a

sense. As students are talking about something personal in the classroom, they most of the time

will forget that you are even there and listening to every word being said. This is a quick way to

gain access to information about things happening outside your classroom. You can get an

insight on a student that you may not be able to get on your own, just by listening in on the

conversations taking place in your classroom. One of the main reasons students forget you are

present is because of the trusting relationship they have built with you.