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We hope that you all enjoyed some well-deserved time off over the holidays, all of your diploma exams went well and that you have come back to school and work ready to make safety your top priority. We are excited to get another semester under way helping students prepare for a safe and productive working life.
As we begin this new year, we look forward to taking our program in some new and interesting directions, while maintaining our current services and expanding our program reach. Take a look below to find out some of what we're up to!
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New Course Development
For five years, Safety in Schools has focused on providing young workers with the knowledge that they need to stay safe at work by offering free, industry-recognized safety training through Alberta schools. We recognize that there is more to keeping our young people safe than teaching the facts. We need to change attitudes and reach young people in a more personal, meaningful way.
That's where
our new custom Safety in Schools courses come in. Each of the new courses that we are developing are based on real-life experiences and the consequences suffered by real people.
Life Lessons - Learning the Hard Way
Launching in February 2016, Life Lessons is a video-based course that introduces students to four individuals whose lives have been impacted by workplace injuries and fatalities in different ways:
- An Alberta OH&S investigator shares some of the things she has seen and the hard lessons she has learned from them through her role in investigating workplace fatalities.
- A young man and a young women who were both severely injured in different types of occupations and in different ways, share their experiences and how their injuries have impacted their lives going forward, other peoples lives around them, and the lessons that they learned the hard way.
- A father shares the story of losing his son in a preventable and tragic workplace fatality. He shares the impact the loss has had on his family and his son's friends and reminds students how needless this type of tragedy is.
By having real people share their stories and the impact these events have had on their lives, students taking the course will gain invaluable insight into the importance of workplace safety and their role in preventing injuries and fatalities. Leading up to the video portion of the course, students are introduced to some of their legal rights and responsibilities at work, as well as some of the common risks and hazards associated with occupations that they are likely to be working in.
That's Got to Hurt! Lessons from the Workplace
That's Got to Hurt! will be the end result of our ongoing student contests. This course will feature workplace experiences sent into us by actual Safety in Schools students and will examine some of the common themes in the submissions that we receive through our video, essay and social media contests.
By involving students in the development of this course and learning from them the actual situations they are faced with in their workplaces, we not only provide the opportunity for a student-driven conversation about safety but we are able to provide a course that they can relate to. Focusing on the workplaces where students are working makes the message personal. This course is about the very people who are taking it.
You can learn more about the contests below.
Heavy Machinery - It Always Wins
While we continue to gather content for
That's Got to Hurt! via our three ongoing student contests, we turn our focus toward the development of another new custom course called
Heavy Machinery - It Always Wins.
This course will focus on serious workplace incidents involving heavy machinery. Basing lessons off of real-life incidents and potential hazards identified by experts,
Heavy Machinery will focus on how to identify hazards in three types of job sectors that involve heavy machinery: manufacturing, transportation and operations.
While it is difficult to identify all of the specific hazards that students taking the course may come across in their working lives, teaching students how to look for hazards and identify the best way to mitigate them can be done using example situations, which is what this course will do. Presenting a variety of situational examples, Heavy Machinery will give students the opportunity to critically analyze situations and complete a hazard assessment.
Heavy machinery is a factor in a disproportionate number of severe injuries
and fatalities. Of 51 convictions in Alberta between 2010 and 2014, 30 incidents involved heavy machinery resulting in 16 fatalities. We can prevent more of thes
e
injuries and fatalities from occurring though early education.
By engagin
g youth
with real-life examples of the risks heavy machinery poses, we can send them into the working world aware of the risks, engaged with their surroundings and knowledgeable about the role they play in their own safety and that of those around them.
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Student Contests - Win up to $1500!
From the beginning of this school year, as part of our
That's Got to Hurt! initiative, we have been running a series of contests for Safety in Schools students, including a video contest, essay contest and social media contest. Each of these contests will continue to run throughout the school year,
closing April 30, 2016 to allow for judging and selection of winners.
This presents an excellent opportunity for classroom discussion and for students to have their voices heard regarding how workplace hazards affect them.
Teachers are encouraged to incorporate these contests into your classrooms. You could have students create videos, write essays or just share their experiences in a classroom discussion, and follow up by having them send their submissions into Safety in Schools.
You could even run mini contests in your classroom to encourage students to participate!
By working together, we can get your students thinking critically about workplace safety and their role in it. Participating in the contests also gives students the chance to win
cash prizes of up to $1500!
Visit the
contest page for more details regarding prizes, eligibility and submission criteria or download the complete
Rules and Regulations package.
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Life Lessons Course Launch Event!
To celebrate the launch of our new
Life Lessons - Learning the Hard Way course, we will be hosting an event in Calgary in February 2016. The event will feature a sampling of the videos that appear in the
Life Lessons course, a program update from your Safety in Schools team and remarks from Daniel Shoemaker.
We are grateful for the opportunity to thank all four of our interviewees, Adele Tait, Nicole Sereda, Fred and Eva Broughton and Daniel for sharing their stories with us and will be hosting them as guests at the event.
Daniel will be speaking to students, teachers and supporters about his experience being injured at work as a young man, how he learned to live with his injury and his experience working on this course with us. Daniel is an energetic, inspiring young man who has turned a traumatic injury into a story of strength and resilience. He is passionate about using his experience to warn young people about the dangers of working without knowing or appreciating the hazards.
We would like to encourage teachers and students to join us.
February 22, 2016
2-4 PM
Western Canada High School
If you would like more information about the event, please contact our Program Coordinator, Sara at
sarar@safetyinschools.ca or
403.984.6375.
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Safety in Schools Foundation | sarar@safetyinschools.ca | 403.984.6375
235 - 17 Ave SE
Calgary AB T2P 0V6
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