Give us 5 minutes… …and you’ll see why YOU need a proven “Connecting the Dots Platform” for your organization, because no one wants a preventable incident on their resume or conscience. Want to get notified as soon as we post helpful information like this? Subscribe to our blog in the right sidebar!Read More →
There are so many “Awareness Days” and “Awareness Months” throughout the year that sometimes I wonder if the “real definitions” and “real issues” are overlooked. Take for example “Campus Safety Awareness Month”, you will no doubt see a lot of campaigns (e-mails, posters, Twitter posts, Facebook posts, and other Social Media posts), but most campaigns will actually miss the real definition and real issues of campus safety and safety awareness. The definition of safety is: state of being safe; freedom from the occurrence or risk of injury, danger, loss… which means preventing the occurrence of risk or threat…not reacting to or hiding from the riskRead More →
Rick recently sat down with Ankeny Community School’s Safety and Security Manager, Chad Bentzinger, to learn more about their school safety efforts and use of TIPS. We are definitely impressed with Ankeny’s leadership and their dedication to keeping their students safe! Below is a quick excerpt from the interview. Click here to listen to the rest of Chad’s experiences. Why did you see a need for the TIPS prevention platform? For us it was a two-pronged approach. Understanding the districts in our area have had to deal with students who have committed suicide and the post effects, we looked at what we can doRead More →
Frogs, Excuses and Budgets Most everyone has heard of the Boiling Frog Syndrome…. When a frog is dropped in boiling water it will jump out…but when a frog is placed in cold water that is gradually heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be ‘cooked to death’. The same is true for Schools and Colleges (and other organizations too) failing to recognize the impact of a gradual rise in risks, threats, incidents, headlines, settlements and tragedies. As student safety incidents and tragedies become more common in the headlines, several common excuses from School Officials and College Officials indicate many may notRead More →
Questions Reveal Answers IF old school advice and hundreds and hundreds of stop bullying programs/curriculums were the solution – why would the CDC cite bullying and suicide as a significant public health problem? http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying-suicide-translation-final-a.pdf IF old school advice and stop bullying programs/curriculums were the solution, why would a 2013 Student Survey of nearly 4,500 students in schools across 19 states reveal that 85% of students witness/experience bullying in their schools? https://www.awareity.com/public/StudentSafetyReport.asp IF millions and millions of dollars spent on security products was the solution – shouldn’t campus and community violence prevention be millions of times better? Do school/college leaders believe theyRead More →
Earlier this month, an elementary school in Buncombe County, N.C., banned 9-year-old Grayson Bruce from carrying his My Little Pony backpack, saying it triggered bullying. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/03/18/my-little-pony-backpack-banned-school-north-carolina/6565425/ According to the student’s mother, one of the school counselor’s suggestions was to hide it. “If you have something like this you’re asking for trouble.” Think about it…BANNING is actually teaching and reinforcing intolerance, BANNING is not helping youth learn how to be tolerant and inclusive. If a school bans My Little Pony backpacks because it might lead to bullying, what’s next? Banning students with red hair, banning students who are overweight, banning students in wheel chairs andRead More →
Earlier this month, Awareity released our 2013 Student Safety Report – What Students Know and School Administrators Don’t. To request the full report click here. The findings outlined in the report provide administrators with the validations and evidence they need to justify immediate action. Just think how much safer every school would be if all students were equipped with the right tools to report incidents and concerning behaviors. Just think what a difference it would make if School Officials were equipped with the right tools to collect information, connect all the right dots, investigate, perform threat assessments, intervene, monitor, and proactively prevent reports fromRead More →
After a very cold and very early start on Sunday morning with a 3 hour delay due to frozen airplane systems and frozen lines (meaning no hot coffee on a very cold plane!), I finally made it to the 25th annual National Youth At-Risk (NYAR) Conference in Savannah, GA. http://coe.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar/ The NYAR conference started with a very motivating and uplifting keynote from Keith Brown – Mr. I’m Possible. http://www.keithlbrown.com/ Mr. Brown reminded everyone that we can make a difference – a huge difference for all youth if we do that little bit extra and if we do not let negativity discourage us from doingRead More →
Article originally posted on Corrections.com http://www.corrections.com/news/article/35182-a-walk-in-the-shoes-of-an-sro What does a School Resource Officer (SRO) do all day? Do they just stand in the hallway at school waiting for violence to occur? Should schools be spending their limited funding on SROs? These are questions, Safety and Security Coordinator for Bradley County Schools, Scotty Hernandez often receives. And NO, the SROs are not twiddling their thumbs. To the contrary, these officers are heavily involved in student activities, classroom lectures, after school events, discipline and more. Bradley County is one of the school districts fortunate enough to have an SRO in each of their school buildings. But,Read More →
Bullying has been going on since people set foot on this planet and people have been writing about bullying all the way back to Cain and Abel. So why does bullying still exist and continue to escalate? Why has bullying escalated to a level that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] declared bullying a “significant health problem”? Bullying exists and bullies exist in nearly every school, nearly every college and nearly every organization. Evidence is overwhelming and it is time to accept the facts and admit status quo bullying approaches are not working, are not solving and are not preventing bullying. WhyRead More →