What Are They Telling Us? Fifth Grade Students Feeling Unsafe

What Are They Telling Us? Fifth Grade Students Feeling Unsafe

As part of an ongoing study examining parent child communication and health risk behaviors, fifth graders in two Midwestern cities complete the Children's Health Risk Behavior Scale (CHRBS), a 21-item screening instrument. One item is “Do you ever feel unsafe at school?” Of 177 respondents, 55 indicated they have sometimes or always felt unsafe at school. Exploring further and reporting the children's descriptions of situations and events that led to their feeling unsafe at school is the purpose of this project.

Though the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey of high school students includes a similar item, rarely have later elementary school aged children been the focus of systematic assessment of feeling unsafe. This study examines how children as young as 10 years of age articulate their experiences of feeling unsafe at school. Research suggests that feeling unsafe may lead to health risk behaviors among school age children such as weapon carrying.

What have we learned? We classified the children's responses into four categories labeled: (a). Being verbally “picked on”, teased, threatened, and bullied; (b). Being physically punched, pushed or grabbed by the clothes; (c). Being exposed to “bad” or “angry” kids, fighting and other children carrying weapons; and (d). Fear related to circumstances that require discussion and “drill” such as fire, tornado and dangerous intruder in the school building.

Listening, acknowledging and responding to these concerns is critical to assuring a safe learning environment and promoting healthy behaviors