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Developing a holistic school safety workshop

Workshop staffing

Ideal staffing includes an educational lead and a workshop coordinator. These staff members support the workshop with:

Event planning/hosting

  • Recruiting presenters and content/educational experts
  • Communications and meetings with community partners, presenters, content/educational experts
  • On-site set-up and support of the workshop

Workshop/presentation development assistance

  • Developing the workshop agenda
  • Producing and assembling workshop materials and participant packets
  • Creating the workshop evaluation and analyzing/summarizing the feedback
  • Debriefing with presenters and community partner staff
  • Data review, distribution to presenters, and workshop adjustment

Build your workshop team

The steps below will help you create and implement a community-partnered holistic school safety development workshop.

  • Identify partner organization(s) with shared goals and commitments

    Find organizations that serve middle to high school aged youth within communities disproportionately affected by injury and violence. These organizations might include:

    • Universities
    • Local and regional educational support services
    • City/county criminal justice departments
    • Youth after school organizations, like the Boys and Girls Club
    • Faith-based organizations

    Form a collaboration between individuals and organizations working together on a common goal or issue of importance to the community.

  • Identify the workshop's holistic school safety topics

    Ask your community partner(s) to choose the presentation topics based on the priorities of the communities they work with and the expertise your organization brings. This is an important component of the co-design process and helps build the partnership.

    Topics might include:

    • Attendance
    • Community resources
    • Family education/engagement
    • Gun violence
    • School climate and student ‘belonging’
    • School violence (including bullying)
    • Social media use
    • Substance use

  • Identify presenters

    Schools and community partners may prefer presenters who represent/have similar lived experiences as youths in their communities. Presenters who represent/have similar lived experiences as youth served by the schools can help promote a sense of connectedness and facilitate a supportive and interactive learning environment.

    Reach out through your network to find individuals interested in a teaching opportunity.

    Make sure your organization’s project leads (an educational lead and program coordinator) meet with each interested presenter to:

    • Share more about the workshop,
    • Learn about the interested presenter, their interests and experiences
    • Determine whether there is a mutual fit for the workshop

  • Create teams of presenters, content experts, and educational experts

    Not all presenters will be experts in the chosen safety topic area. Identify content experts who can share expertise and materials with the presenters for each topic area, as well as educational experts who can share best practices. Content experts and educational experts may not necessarily present.

    • Ensure that a full complement of expertise and support is available for creating effective, evidence-based presentations.
    • Ask presenters which topics they are most interested in presenting to ensure presenter buy-in.
    • Offer the opportunity for two presenters to work together as a pair for each topic area. This can bring different expertise, insights, and experiences to the presentation.

Building your workshop team will give you a strong foundation for developing a strong curriculum.

Logistics and planning

The timeline below begins 4 months prior to the workshop. It covers early planning, outreach, material preparation, and staff coordination to ensure a smooth rollout.

This allows time for thoughtful engagement with partners, recruitment, and logistics before presentations begin.

4 months in advance

  • Determine time of year for workshop
    • Set aside time to connect with partners within districts/schools, external law enforcement, subject matter experts and other community partners to discuss content and clarify how each group may contribute to the workshop
    • Late winter/early spring may be a good time in academic year in order for the workshop to be a springboard for policy/practice/program changes implemented for the start of the new academic year beginning in the fall
    • Ensure districts have intentional time over the summer to implement programming for the fall
  • Establish budget parameters for:
    • Presenters, facilitators, subject matter experts
    • Food and refreshments
    • Space
    • Audio/visual support
    • Printing

3 months in advance

  • Identify audience (districts / schools)
  • Be very clear on who you would like from the districts/schools as participants. Leadership and safety personnel are the most likely to attend based upon the topic name. However, since the goal is to adopt a holistic approach, it will be necessary to specify additional personnel who would be important contributors to this discussion. This might include:
    • School board representatives
    • School principal(s)
    • School health personnel (nurse, social worker, psychologist)
    • Special needs leadership
    • School security leadership
  • Identify/confirm workshop date
  • Identify location and reserve space (include audio/visual needs)
  • Send “Save the Date” invitations to district partners (and identify key contacts)
  • Identify/confirm workshop presenters, including subject matter experts and guest speakers

2 months in advance

  • Work with district contact to ensure multidisciplinary participation from each district. This might include:
    • School board representative
    • School principal
    • School health personnel (nurse, social worker, psychologist)
    • Special education leadership
    • School safety/security leadership
    • Local law enforcement partners
    • Parent/community representatives
  • Plan for catering and other supports to ensure an engaged, comfortable environment
  • Send reminder to attendees

1 month in advance

  • Ensure district partners have access to data/pre-reading and know they can bring any other data (after action reports, monthly drill reports, parent/community feedback). You can also:
    • Download selected Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) report card data at the state, educational service district (ESD) and district level for participant packets
      • Districts have access to this information, however, consider providing it directly to participants in advance to ensure that those who wouldn’t typically utilize this data routinely are up to speed
    • Download Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) data for the 35 questions aligned to the domains (see Appendix B) for State/County/ESD and create tables for each question with a summary of “takeaways” from the data. Consider requesting districts to download their data and providing it to facilitators to add to the comparisons

At least 2 weeks in advance

  • Begin slide deck
  • Begin collating OSPI, HYS, and any other data for participant packets/pre-reading
  • Confirm attendees/send reminders to RSVP

1 week in advance

  • Print and collate material (include survey of participants to solicit feedback to improve workshop delivery)
  • Finalize agenda and distribute to participants
  • Finalize slide deck
  • Conduct rehearsal review with facilitators
  • Confirm catering order
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