In a crisis, every second matters. During a routine school day, every second contributes to reaching academic goals for the year. From the time the bell rings in the morning until it rings again in the afternoon, a school day is carefully planned for optimal learning. However, no matter how comprehensive the planning, disruptions are bound to happen.
Utilizing innovative school alert systems with reporting capabilities can help your school reduce disruptions and better handle emergencies. By reclaiming lost instructional time, you ensure your students make the most of their school day.
Classroom Disturbances Impact Student Instruction
A mere two-second disturbance is enough for a student to lose a mental thread. For a child to regain momentum after a class interruption, research shows it can take eight minutes to refocus on a simple task, and up to 25 minutes if the task is complicated. And this doesn’t account for the length of the interruption itself.
Based on a recent National Center for Education Statistics study, over 80% of US schools report that the pandemic negatively affected student behavior and harmed their social-emotional health.
Without the addition of classroom crises, interruptions based on student misconduct have increased by over 50%. Absenteeism, distractions because of electronic devices, and general rowdiness have all been on the rise, too. Kids are having a hard time concentrating post-pandemic.
Classroom Disturbances Impact Teacher Well-being
To support your students, you must first support your teachers. Teaching is the main, but not only, responsibility educators are charged with during the average school day. With fewer resources and teacher shortages causing staff to be spread too thin, it’s harder for our educators to stay focused.
Teachers need all the help they can get to foster a culture of safety and keep students’ minds on track. Having an innovative school alert system as the foundation for your school’s multi-layered safety plan can give you the tools you need to do just that. It facilitates:
- Instructional time support—Quickly addressing and resolving disruptions is critical to reconciling order, focus, and active learning in the classroom.
- Teacher retention—Teachers who have proper support are more likely to feel safe at work, satisfied with their workloads, and more likely to stay in their professions.
- Addressing the teacher shortage—Institutions that actively foster a culture of safety are better places to work and can position their culture as a recruitment tool to bring on more teachers to spread the workload.
A safer environment is a much more inviting place for a teacher to stay. With teacher retention rates slowly recovering from the highest turnover rate in 2021-2022, schools must give teachers everything they need to feel successful and supported in their roles.
When a teacher is focused solely on the student in a crisis, they can’t supervise anyone else. They need immediate support. When teachers have access to a school alert system, they feel safer and more supported in a crisis.
An automated support system for teachers and administration is within your grasp. School alert systems provide a wealth of actionable data that administrators can use to better the entire campus.
Innovative School Alert Systems Provide Better Data
Administrators know that better data leads to more effective solutions. From measuring student progress to evaluating curriculum effectiveness to tracking absences or the allocation of resources, the more metrics, the better. With numbers in hand, change is possible.
When administrators are evaluating their schools, they can ask:
- Is there adequate support in each classroom?
- Are there teachers who need additional professional learning?
- Are there changes that need to happen in certain classrooms?
- Are there areas within the school that have a higher incidence of student misconduct?
- Is there a way to collect data automatically?
- Are there digital solutions that can support us?
A radio or intercom system allows very little data collection—perhaps only what staff members have time to take down by hand. More often than not, educators have their hands full.
Conversely, when schools use technological systems, they gather actionable metrics.
Data-gathering systems give administrators the numbers necessary to call for effective and efficient change. School alert systems eliminate much of the guesswork involved in current processes and provide better visibility on trends and investments.
Data collected with a school alert system can help administrators determine:
- How quickly help arrived at a crisis
- Where the problem areas are
- Which students need additional help and support
- Which classrooms need additional help and support
- Where to make changes, for example, in student misconduct procedures
- Necessary professional development for staff
- Which classrooms need closer monitoring
- Staff technical training needed
Once faculty and staff fully understand these conditions, they are one step closer to real change. For example, if the back of the cafeteria is the location of a daily disturbance, then it’s clear a solution is needed. It could be as simple as rearranging the tables or assigning a teacher to monitor the area during lunchtime.
Useful data collected over time may reveal that a major shift in school systems is called for, such as assigning seats or separating specific students who don’t get along. Without an alert system in place to collect data needed to form a clear picture of the situation, the school may be doomed to an endless trial-and-error cycle in its efforts to prevent disturbances.
Without documentation, you have no data. Whether you’re handling day-to-day issues or a medical situation, data helps prepare schools for the future. Metrics are one definite way to prevent a potential crisis from happening.
Innovative technology can make positive impacts not only on crisis response but on the overall safety of your schools by helping with:
- Teacher retention, recruitment, and support
- Resource equity
- School improvement
- Data collection
- Time management
- Visitor management
The right technology for your school can provide these solutions, together.
Reclaim Instructional Time With CENTEGIX
From classroom behavioral incidents to minor medical emergencies, disruptions affect the learning process for everyone present. While interruptions are inevitable, teachers can be prepared with innovative tools that directly address and resolve disruptions to regain classroom focus as quickly as possible.
CENTEGIX technology can help de-escalate disruptions and emergencies at school. The CENTEGIX SafetyPlatform™ offers detailed reporting capabilities to identify problem issues and determine the right actions to address them.
CENTEGIX Chief Development Officer and former education administrator, Dr. Rocky Sams, elaborated on the feedback they are receiving from administrators. “As schools adopt our system and review the data, they better understand where their needs are. This results in better planning. They will know how to identify which teachers have disruptive classrooms and may need additional professional training. Or if there is a disproportionate amount of incidents coming from one classroom. These are benefits that many don’t think about as they’re looking for a safety solution. These auxiliary benefits impact reclaiming instructional time, alleviate teacher retention, and help support teacher recruitment. It’s resource equity. These are the kinds of things that we’re learning have lasting and positive impacts on schools. So I often talk about our safety platform as not just a safety platform—but a school Improvement platform.”
The SafetyPlatform is the foundation for a multi-layered approach to safety that can help reclaim instructional time:
- CrisisAlert™ wearable badge allows teachers to request help discreetly and rapidly to the exact location of the incident with just the push of a button. CrisisAlert decreases response times to an emergency, providing support to teachers and giving them the help they need to reclaim classroom focus.
- Safety Blueprint™ provides enhanced digital mapping displaying the exact location of a crisis and where the school safety assets are, enabling on-site responders to get where help is needed quickly.
- Visitor Management screens all visitors and records student tardiness and early school check-outs, which might identify harmful patterns. Students can receive help before attendance issues become serious.
CENTEGIX can save time, build metrics, and improve systems in schools for administrators, teachers, and students. With a multi-layered approach to safety in place, your teachers can reclaim lost instructional time and foster a positive educational environment for their students.
It’s not just a safety platform. It’s a school improvement platform. Schedule a demo today.