Some considerations of safety issues in the K-12 environment. Safety issues in these facilities are in many ways even more important than at the college level and professional level. This is for several reasons:

1. Children have a less developed sense of hazard recognition and awareness of the abstract potential for injury to themselves or others. They don’t perceive abstract danger – Example: A heavy object perched precariously above them is not seen as a potential way to be injured.
   
   
2. The persons responsible for the welfare of children have an extra-duty to protect those under their care, and in order to do that they must be trained to recognize hazards and understand how to initiate the hazard mitigation process. How many K-12 school teachers and/or principals have and understand the NFPA documents that directly affect their role in using the performance spaces under their supervision? Fire Codes? Building Codes? OSHA regulations? Very few. How can they teach what they don’t know?
   
   
3. Both children and those responsible for them can use each and every hazard encounter as an educational opportunity to explain how the world works and how their environment can affect their livelihood. See:
   
   http://theatreface.ning.com/profiles/blogs/near-misses-can-be-a-lea...
   
   http://theatreface.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-pat-on-the-back-is-onl...
   
   Teaching students about safety in the performing arts provides a set of life skills that almost any employer would require of them in the workplace. Learning about safety is a basic life skill. In order to achieve this, those that are doing the teaching, must also be educated in the subject.
   
   
4. Learning how to address safety concerns in a rational and thoughtful manner provides the student and teachers with interpersonal skills that will be useful in other walks of life. One must be able to address unpopular subjects and disarm conflicts that might arise from safety related situations. Interpersonal skills are key to success at all levels of employment.
   
   
5. Learning about safety from the perspective of what is expected of the individual and how their actions, or in-actions, might affect the lives of those around them builds respect and empathy, further life skills that are important in survival and caring for our fellow workers. Let us prepare students to be safer workers when they advance into the collegiate and professional workplace.

Also refer to:

http://theatreface.ning.com/profiles/blogs/never-argue-with-idiots

and:

http://theatreface.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-seven-deadly-sins-of...