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Effective Education for Disaster Risk Reduction - Learning Matters.

Teaching Earthquake Safety

Teaching about hazards and in particular, earthquakes, can be challenging. A balance has to be struck between preparing children while not frightening them so that they either panic or deny the risk in later life as a coping mechanism. Later on this year in November I hope to part of a team of researchers observing Earthquake Drills in Southern California. As a researcher and a teacher I would argue the case for good experiential learning where children carry out a wide variety of learning activities to learn about how best to react in the event of an earthquake, alongside drill practice and first aid classes which will also give them the capacity to help in the event of a particularly large earthquake. But what is your view? Have you been carrying out education along these lines? If so let us know and even share your resources with us for others to use. You can attach up to three documents with each forum input! I look forward to reading about your experiences...

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Permalink Reply by Louise Sharpe on August 26, 2008 at 20:17

I work with children with special needs, teaching them about how to look after themselves on a day to day basis is a large part of my job. So preparing them for any kind of emergency is a real challenge, even a simple fire drill is a major operation. I find that with our autistic children, or those who find sudden noise or movement upsetting, to talk them though what will happen before the event, and make sure they have a THOROUGH understanding of what is happening.

If you live in an area where a disaster is likely then I would try to build a drill in to the routine of the week so that the students are not shocked or confused. If this is not practical you could give work that will help the students understand what is happening, how long it will last, what they should do after the event, and maybe bring in some circle time about how they feel when an earthquake, for example, occurs. This could be done through many different methods depending on the style that works best with the particular problems of those children.

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Permalink Reply by Justin Sharpe on August 26, 2008 at 20:29

Thank you for that useful input into the discussion. It is very practical advice which I will certainly take into account when developing educational materials!

Justin

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Permalink Reply by emmerando martin p. cruz on December 7, 2009 at 12:19

Almost ten years ago i was given the task of making an emergency preparedness plan of our school that cater almost 4,000 pupils, 96 teacher and 12 utility personnel, all are in one campus of two 5 story building. It took me a few months to develop such system. I've consulted some friends that are engineer, fire fighter and paramedic for me to know the weak and strong part of the building for the engineer, the place where firemen first make their salvage and rescue as well as the paramedics. My disaster preparedness plan is designed for our school but it made an impact on some other school that they ask me to make a talk for them to be educated in evacuation style our school are performing. Modern designs of building made it unsafe for children to mobilize evacuation. My voice is so small to catch the attention of our local authority, and also my luck of educational background to deal with such argument. but as i can see, it does not need an expert to see this concern. i will still go on my program in training and educating my co-teachers and pupils of my EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS PLAN. I'll ask some one to copy paste my write up about this, i still luck the knowledge of doing it, my apologies.