ROCKET'S SENSE OF SAFETY & BEYOND!

Community Safety

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Every day, across the US, thousands of children suffer from an increasing number of acts of violence, bullying and injuries in their community. Children often end up in emergency hospitals, as a result of their action/decision that could have been prevented if they had the proper knowledge. Keeping children safe every day is the greatest concern of parents, schools and community. Each year: 12,000 children and young adults die from unintentional injuries (Stanford Health). 254,000 children (under 18) are injured in the community. 2,000+ children ages 14 and under die as a result of a home injury and many more are injured. 1 of 5 students report being bullied. Our goal is to enable better decision making by our youngest, most vulnerable children and thereby reduce incidents and prevent serious injuries. Our program is unique as it addresses a range of safety issues for children as young as 4 years of age and provides knowledge and appropriate responses to threatening situations.

Basic Situational & Sensory Awareness Safety Skills are the foundation of the program. The program includes Rocket animated videos, Rocket’s Sense of Safety & Beyond! Activity Books, 15 activities and standards based lesson plans for teachers and scripts. For teachers, it’s easy to administer, and insert during the day, as each lesson is approx. 20 min. For special events Rocket will visit the classroom for an interactive zoom call. By using their senses, including their intuitive 6th sense (that feeling that something is not quite right), children become more aware of the world around them and what to do in various relevant everyday situations to avoid serious injuries. Students develop a mindset for safety, building a schema for how to respond and plan for different scenarios resulting in a quick response to possible dangerous situations. The program builds in knowledge so that it becomes embedded in the minds of students. Rocket’s Safety Certificates for each subject are awarded to students. Activities, Lessons and certificates go home encouraging parents and guardians to be involved and communicate with their child about everyday safety. Social emotional topics: making friends, saying kind things, asking for help also bring an important healthy dimension to student behavior and supports a positive school culture. The program empowers children with critical life long skills and the confidence they need to make smart decisions that can avoid serious injuries.

The vision for success is to build a Mindset for Safety for PreK to 2nd grade children throughout L.A. County elementary schools. Early exposure to safety and social emotional (empathy and kindness) best practices will result in fewer serious injuries making the community a safer place. This includes fewer accidents of children crossing the streets unsafely, fewer household accidents and fewer bullying incidents. The social emotional lessons on being kind, asking for help, thinking about the feelings of others results in a more empathetic young population, and a healthier young person. This will result in a more positive school culture with fewer behavioral issues. L.A. County benefits as these youngsters are making better choices on a daily basis. Students who are more empathetic, more engaged, more focused on doing the right thing results in more success in school. This means that long term these same children contribute to the betterment of the entire L.A. County.

This is an early-stage program. It has been implemented in select LAUSD elementary schools. The measurement of impact and success is both quantifiable and anecdotal. Schools capture behavioral and accident incidents. As this program continues from K thru 2nd grade, we expect to see a reduction in school based accidents including bullying. Outside of school, kids will avoid scenarios that could result in serious injury. The increased skills kids acquire will allow them to make smarter every day decisions, thus reducing accidents to and from school and in the community. This gives children a sense of security and a sense of safety. Similarly, developing an early mindset for kindness, enhances empathy and other important social emotional skills, will result in an improved school culture. Also, there will be increased academic focus due to fewer distractions, and reduced behavioral incidents. A measurable outcome is fewer attendance issues because children want to be in school.