Student Safety Mapping Assessment

This activity is designed to function as a needs assessment for determining student perceptions of unsafe areas within the school and on the school grounds. The results are used to inform staff as to which school areas are perceived by students to be the most unsafe.

The mapping assessment can be used as often as deemed necessary during the school year, but it is strongly suggested that the first use in any given year be at least 2 to 3 months into the school year giving students time enough to develop informed opinions about which areas are perceived most unsafe for themselves or their peers.

How it works:

  1. Obtain or develop a map of the school building(s) and grounds (see pages 3 and 4 below). The map should include labels of all classrooms (by room number, function, and/or staff), specialty areas (cafeteria, library, etc.), common areas, and surrounding school property where students may have occasion to go (playground, arrival/dismissal areas, sidewalks, fields, etc.).
  2. On a designated day or days (1st Monday in November, 1st week in November, etc.) provide each student with a copy of the school map.
  3. Ask them to place 3 dots on their copy – for the 3 places they “feel most unsafe.” Use only this language and if a student should ask what you mean, give some examples of what you feel is unsafe for students (e.g., where there are lots of aggression or fights, where someone has threatened you or your peers one or more times, where bullies hang out and bother people, where things you don’t like or feel uncomfortable about happen frequently, etc.).
  4. Tell the students clearly that the assessment is anonymous – stress that they should not put their name or any other identifying marks on it and that any maps with names or other potentially identifying marks will be thrown away by the teacher.
  5. Have the students fold the map in half when done and either have the teacher or staff member walk around and collect them or have the students come up when done and hand them to the teacher or other staff. Ask the students not to share their answers or maps with others by saying that better information is collected when the answers are completely anonymous, or something to that effect
  6. Sometime after the maps are collected, the individual teacher or staff member will aggregate the results by transferring the dots from each student’s map to a master map for the class or group who completed it. This master map can have the date and name of the staff member who collected the student maps, but no student names. Staff should be made aware that a student or students may have placed a dot in that staff members room or area. This would not be an indication that the staff member is unsafe or remiss in keeping students safe, but rather it is an indication that some perceived unsafe incident(s) or condition(s) of an unknown nature exist or have happened in that area for a student or students. The unsafe or problem behaviors or conditions that would occasion such perceptions in students are typically extremely covert in nature and are almost always outside the adult’s ability to immediately perceive.
  7. When the teachers or staff members have aggregated all of the results from the class or area, their master maps are sent to the office where the PBIS team or other staff will analyze the results, perhaps making a further master map combining all the results by grade level, or by total student population, etc. After the results are analyzed, a short summary report can be given to staff and other stakeholder groups.

The results should be analyzed with one primary goal in mind: Areas designated by the students as highly unsafe (having a lot of dots placed in or on them) should be considered for increased supervision and behavioral management strategies.

In the example on page 4 below, you will notice that 2 or 3 areas are clearly indicated as being unsafe – the basketball courts, the tennis courts (which are adjacent to each other and located behind the gym and to the side of what appears to be some temporary classroom buildings), and in the “courtyard” area in front of rooms 29 – 34. This example school’s results were for the 6th grade only and the school used them to determine where to allocate more of their supervision resources.

Cautions:

  1. Do not try to make this activity more complicated than it is by trying to ask more information from the students. Collect other information such as what kind of unsafe situations or behaviors are taking place in an area, or who might be acting in an unsafe manner, or what time of day does the unsafe situations or behaviors take place, or even asking students to rank the areas or indicate other areas that they DO feel safe in. These questions can be answered later in a much less intrusive way than through mapping andthrough the observations of the supervisors now supervising the areas in question. In the example, the school increased supervision in the 3 top areas indicated immediately and then started privately asking students they frequently encountered in those areas what might be happening that would make their peers designate that area as “unsafe.” In this manner other questions got answered in relatively short order.
  2. Do not use the assessment as a “job evaluation” tool for staff. It is not valid for that purpose. The mapping activity is a needs-assessment type activity and the results are used to inform the staff about potential problem areas allowing them to better allocate and focus the limited supervision and behavior support resources available on a daily basis.

Student Safety Mapping Assessment