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Helping Students Comply With
Safety Rules
The student safety contract, which should be signed by both the student and a
parent or guardian, is the foundation of the laboratory science safety program
in the school. It is not enough, however, to set the rules and to “cover” them on
the first or second day of class. Safety rules should be reviewed continuously
throughout the school year, and they must be consistently enforced on a daily
basis.
The Flinn Scientific Student Safety Contract is available in both
a middle school and a high school version and also in Spanish!
DID YOU
KNOW?
Visit the Flinn Scientific website at www.flinnsci.com to download copies of the
appropriate safety contract.
Start With Safety!
Here are some ideas teachers have shared with us for reviewing the student safety
contract and helping students remember the safety rules.
1. At the start of every class, read aloud one rule from the safety contract. By
discussing safety every day, your students quickly will learn that safety is
indeed your No. 1 priority! Reading one rule daily will allow you to review the
entire safety contract three times over the course of the school year.
2. Incorporate safety into each laboratory exercise. Begin each lab period with a
discussion of the chemicals, equipment and procedures used in the experiment
and the safety precautions that must be observed. Pay special attention to
nonroutine hazards, such as working with dissection equipment, that students
may not encounter during every lab period. Prelab assignments are an ideal
mechanism to ensure that students are prepared for lab and understand the
safety precautions.
3. Have students make safety posters, and decorate the classroom or lab
with the students’ artwork. Seeing their own bright, colorful safety posters
throughout the lab will help remind students that safety is important for you
and for themselves! Sure, you could buy posters, but how much better to
engage the students and gain their perspectives. This is a great assignment
for a “substitute-teacher day.” Provide paper, markers and poster board and
have students make safety posters to illustrate the rules in the student safety
contract. You will be amazed at the students’ creativity, insight—and humor!
4. Record all safety instruction in your lesson plan. Every time you discuss safety
in class, take a moment to write down in your lesson plan book what you talked
about. Your lesson plan is a very valuable document should you ever have to
prove that you are a responsible science teacher.
Regular and routine review of the safety rules will increase both student and teacher
awareness of their safety in the lab and in the classroom. Make safety a habit!
Enforcing the Safety Rules
Make sure students know the rules and, more importantly, that there are
consequences if they break the rules. All safety rules must be enforced consistently
without discrimination.
Many teachers will issue a verbal warning or “safety ticket” for a first rule
violation. If a second violation occurs during the same lab period, the student
may be removed from the lab and given a zero for the day. If a student repeatedly
disregards the safety rules, you must make the consequences more severe. The
student may serve a detention or in-school suspension, and the student’s parents
or guardian should be notified. Having the parents remind the students that they
also signed the safety contract is often all it takes to correct the behavior. Repeated
violations of the safety contract should be dealt with by the school administration.
Students who do not follow the safety rules endanger not only themselves but
all of their fellow students. Courts have ruled that the teacher and the school will
be considered negligent if they do not enforce safety rules on a consistent basis.
Make Safety a Habit
We are grateful to teachers who have shared their time-tested ideas for ensuring
student compliance with safety. You know these ideas will work!
• Make safety a team effort! Empower lab teams to be responsible for each
member’s behavior. If a group member violates a safety rule, the entire group is
warned and ultimately penalized. Peer pressure being what it is, you will find that
the students themselves, rather than you, will begin to enforce the safety rules in
the lab.
• Have students be in charge of presenting the safety lesson for a lab or classroom
activity. Rotate this assignment among all the lab groups in the class so every
group presents one safety lesson per quarter. Who knows better than teachers
that the best way to learn something is to have to teach it!
• Students who wear their goggles around their necks or as “forehead protectors”
should be assigned to wear their goggles during the next regular class period
whether it’s a test, a group activity or a lecture.
• Anyone caught not wearing their goggles must sing the “Goggle Song” in front of
the class. Alternatively, have the entire class sing the song.
The Goggle Song
The Goggle Song is sung to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot.”
I’m a little chemist,
Short and stout,
Here are my goggles,
Here are my eyes.
If I don’t wear my goggles, my teacher shouts:
Put them on or you get out!
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