Resources

Accompanying Resources: 

• Reimagining School Safety: A Guide for Schools and Communities
• Video: Shifting School Safety Paradigms with Students at the Center: Perspectives from Students at Bard Early College New Orleans

This Guide shares the experience of one educator who adapted the Reimagining School Safety Guide to use in her classroom with pre-college students in New Orleans, Louisiana. It provides practical insights on how to use the Guide in a school setting with students as part of an effort to reconsider and shift paradigms of school safety. 

Key Insights

• The Reimagining School Safety Guide can be adapted for a young adult audience and used to engage them in discussing and shifting school safety paradigms.
• For students, school safety is not a “neutral” topic; it is something they experience every day in the physical and social ways they engage with their school and the people in it. Thus, they are an essential partner for addressing challenges in school safety and contributing to efforts to reimagine what safety means and how to achieve it. Doing so takes commitment from the adults facilitating these conversations to effectively engage students in safe, supportive, and equitable ways.
• Educators must continuously examine their mindsets and practices to cultivate safe and supportive learning environments where students feel comfortable providing authentic feedback about their schools’ safety challenges.

Who is the Guide for?

The Guide is for educators and school site leaders—particularly those for students in middle school, high school, pre-college, and college—who are looking to include student perspectives in addressing school safety issues. Find actionable ideas to create a classroom that cultivates safety, inclusion, and engaged conversations about school safety, and explore school safety issues and specific strategies for engaging students in discussions about it.