Chapter 1 - What Safety Is

Creating Emotionally Safe Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents
by Jane Bluestein, Ph.D.

(Page 2 of 4)

I have this recurring nightmare: I'm back in high school and I can't get out.
Ruthie

I was a slow reader and a slow answerer. My learning style didn't “work.” I was terrified. I never understood anything right.
Sheryl

Of course I'm right-handed. I went through three years of school with my left hand tied to my desk.
Martin

Forty-five years later, there are two words that still strike an icy fear in my heart: Gym Class.
Ron

I was never afraid of my teachers, unless I didn't know something. Or forgot my book. Or came late. Or made a mistake.
Hallie

Excerpts from various survey and interview responses to questions about emotional safety in respondents' school experiences

It's 1999, right before Thanksgiving, and I'm sitting down to breakfast with the Sunday paper. I reach for the comics and the color supplements, which is where I normally start, but I can't get past the headlines: Deming Girl Dies. A thirteen year-old middle-school student in southern New Mexico is now dead at the hands of a classmate, shot in the back of the head in the lobby of the school. On page two, a story about a boy the same age in Palmdale, California, dead after a fistfight in which he hit his head on the sidewalk. On the following page are details of the Texas A&M University bonfire tragedy, which killed twelve and injured twenty-seven. I haven't even been at the table ten minutes, and I've gotten a very strong message over and over in the first three pages of our local newspaper: Our schools are not safe.

We read and hear much about death and violence in schools, even though fewer that 1 percent of all violent deaths of children occur on school grounds.2 In fact, assuming we can trust the numbers, schools are safer for children than their homes or communities. And yet, what gets the greatest attention and the widest coverage? Even the U.S. Department of Education's Annual Report on School Safety, which affirms that “the vast majority of America's schools are safe places,” focuses much of its reporting on crime, substance abuse and violence. These statistics, and the stories we see in the papers and on the news, are important and valuable for bringing attention to the need for safety in schools. My concern is that these resources, understandably, perhaps even necessarily, work from a definition of safety that is deceptively narrow.

I don't think we can expect to see sensational media accounts any time soon of the student who is berated for a wrong answer or the child who is teased and humiliated by her peers, unless, of course, these events end in violence. And while no one would presume to compare the relative traumas of a scolding to a shooting, make no mistake about it, these and countless other interactions compromise and erode the emotional climate in schools on a daily basis. These incidents, and the hundreds of other situations, techniques and exchanges that do not support basic safety needs, may be harder to spot, document or measure, but they deserve our attention, and they deserve to be taken seriously, for they, too, leave scars. It's easy to get caught up in the extreme events we have witnessed, as well as the finger-pointing and hand-wringing that occur in their wake. But the headlines also point to a host of other serious, if grossly subtler, problems, and as far as emotional safety goes, we've got bigger fish to fry.

In a hierarchy of more than two dozen human needs compiled from the works of Abraham Maslow, Alice Miller, Andrew Weil and William Glasser, “safety” is number two, just above basic survival needs, like food and shelter. The need for safety-and I want to stress that I am talking about emotional and psychological safety, as well as the absence of physical threat-is so basic and so important, that unless this need is met, all other higher-level needs, like the needs for belonging, success and purpose, to name a few, become extremely difficult to satisfy or achieve in healthy ways. Oh sure, most of us become masters of adaptation, and anyone who spends much time with kids with a history of not feeling safe can probably reel off a long list of behaviors and attitudes used to compensate. But this is hardly the same as learning, inquiring and relating, much less self-actualizing, and few parents or educators would suggest that we should be satisfied with compensation.

We react to tragedy wanting to know why, but I want us to start asking different questions before another tragic event occurs. For the moment, at least, I'm far more concerned with how schools feel, and if kids-and their teacher's-are not looking forward to school each day as an exciting and enriching opportunity to meet their higher-level needs, I want to know what we can do to make it right. I want to know how kids and grownups are treated in school, and the degree to which all are (and feel) valued. I want to know what kinds of opportunities exist for all students, not just for learning, but for success as well. I want to know how we're listening, and how we let kids know they're worth listening to. I want to know how we're supporting personal and social development, and teaching kids ways to deal with problems and hurt feelings without hurting themselves or anyone else. I want to know, if I walk into your classroom as a student, if I will be welcome there, regardless of my previous grades and test scores, my appearance, my personality, my learning preferences or how much I love your subject area. As counselor Barbara Wills reminds, “Emotional safety is in the eye of the beholder. A place can be very safe, but if the student perceives it not to be, it isn't.”

The good news appears in the form of new research, new technologies and new programs, and the fact that schools throughout the world are starting to examine and address issues that go beyond the academic concerns that have grabbed the lion's share of our attention in years past, often to the exclusion of other, equally important dimensions of human growth and development. Much of the research I uncovered and many of the people I interviewed point to large numbers of individuals who are working very specifically on quests that will ultimately contribute to advances and improvements in emotional safety, whether or not that was their initial intention. And I have seen much evidence to suggest that as we strive to eliminate the emotional, psychological and even instructional injuries that children sustain in schools, we're going to see fewer and fewer headlines of horrifying violence, despite numerous other influences that could, indeed, lead children in that direction.

I pray that we never see another tragedy in school and would give anything if the ones that have occurred could somehow, magically, be reversed. However, if recent violence forces us to step back and see how much this issue of safety really involves, if it bring us closer to a willingness to look at all of the factors that impact a child's life and learning (including the factors we don't want to look at or don't believe we're equipped to handle), if it can somehow take us from blame and regret to prevention and solutions, then perhaps some greater purpose will have been served.

© 2001 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

Jane Bluestein, Ph.D. is an expert in the field of parenting with more than 20 years professional experience. A dynamic and entertaining speaker, she presents engaging and accessible training programs to groups around the globe. Dr. Bluestein currently heads Instructional Support Services, Inc. a consulting and resource firm that provides staff development and parent training programs worldwide.