Safety and Exhaustion

After doing our SEL Activity in the previous post(s), my students then went further to rate their safety and level of exhaustion.  

We decided to break down safety into three domains:  safety in school, safety at home, and safety in the community.

Safety at school:   Ten percent of my students do not feel safe at all in our school.   Students wrote on their sticky notes that we have too many fights and that they were worried someone would eventually come in with a gun.   Five percent of my students rated themselves at a three and fifteen percent of my students rated themselves at a four.  Overall, 30% of my students are not feeling very safe at school.

In addition to that 30%, twenty-four percent of my students rated themselves "in the middle" at a five.    Not one student rated themselves in the 6 range or 8 range.   

Fifteen percent rated themselves at a seven, Nineteen percent rated themselves at a nine, and twelve percent of our students rated themselves as perfectly safe with a ten rating.   

Something interesting to note is that several students mentioned the NOISE of the building as what makes them feel less safe.   Shouting, slamming of lockers, the fact that we have to keep our doors locked at all times and there's a lot of knocking.   The other interesting factor was how many students felt unsafe in the parking lot because of student drivers.

Safety at home:  I was pleased to learn that fifty-five percent of my students rated themselves at a ten for this.   An additional fourteen percent rated themselves at a nine.   The students who rated themselves at a nine indicated that their homes were under construction and that was a bit unsafe.   Fourteen percent of my students rated themselves at a seven.   I had 4% of my students give themselves a rating at 2, 5, 6, and 8.

Safety in the community:  These results weren't only interesting to compile, but interesting to discuss.  Only 9% of my students rated themselves in the ten range.   Twenty-eight percent of my students gave a 7/8 rating, nine percent gave a rating of 6, and THIRTY-TWO percent gave a rating of five.   Eighteen percent of my students gave a rating of four whereas I only had one student give a rating of three and one student give a rating of two.   

Many students discussed how terrible the drivers are in our town.  What is ironic about this is our community was, for quite some time, having a serious issue with kids deliberately riding their bikes in front of cars.   Even I had an incredibly close call that seriously gave me nightmares.  Several months ago, before sunrise, prior to 6:30am, a student {all in black} zoomed right in front of my vehicle.  I was not speeding, but my God, it was close!!!!  

The other issue students discussed is creepy white men and racist white men.   My girls especially gave examples of how they were at this place or that place and a man hit on them, followed them, took their picture, made a gesture, etc... 

Lastly, we discussed the difference between being tired vs. being exhausted.    I told students to imagine that we were going to all go home and take a nap.   I explained to them that if they could "totally nap" and sleep for a good 1-3 hours and wake up refreshed... they are tired.   However, if they went home and "crashed" and did not wake up until the next day, that would be the result of exhaustion.

With that said it was interesting to see that only 22% of my students defined/rated themselves as truly exhausted whereas 14% of my students gave themselves a ten rating for tired.  Seventy-three percent of my students are definitely tired and in definite need of a nap.   I had a few students tell me that they now avoid taking a nap because then they can't go to bed at a normal time and the cycle just gets worse for them.  I honestly was expecting the numbers for exhaustion to be much more shocking, but the reality is, according to the data... these kids really just want a nap and a later school start time.    I can't say I disagree with them.   My own biological children are in elementary school and by the time I'm getting ready for third period, their classes are just beginning.