Cultivating a Culture of Preparedness During National Preparedness Month
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Comprehensive emergency preparedness involves everyone in
the whole school community whether they work within school or
campus buildings, live within the school community, or
trust the school community with the education and safety of
their children. However, not everyone knows their role
in helping to prepare the community. This year’s National
Preparedness Month theme, “A Lasting Legacy,” is the
perfect impetus for education agencies to take the lead
in promoting a whole school community culture of emergency
preparedness. Find recommended activities below that
education agencies can engage in during September
to promote emergency preparedness to students, faculty
and staff, community partners, and caregivers.
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Students: Use the REMS TA Center’s #MyPreparednessPromise graphic to encourage
students to share actions they can take throughout the month of September
to help cultivate a culture of preparedness. Download the graphic from our
Creative Materials
page.
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Faculty and Staff: Use the tabletop exercises included within the
REMS TA Center’s
Emergency Exercises Package
as a part of professional development or training sessions hosted
with faculty and staff. It’s a great way to encourage
continual brainstorming around emergency preparedness.
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Community Partners: Assess the partners that your education agency
currently relies on for support in the event of an emergency and determine whether
a memorandum of understanding needs to be created or updated. Access the REMS TA Center’s
online course
for a refresher on this topic.
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Caregivers: Reinforce the role of families and caregivers in enhancing
school safety by inviting them to engage in emergency preparedness
activities hosted by your school, school district, institution of higher
education (IHE), or community partners. Learn more about the role of
families and caregivers by listening to our
Webinar
on this topic.
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Free Technology Applications for Emergency Management Planning
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Are you ready to engage in emergency management planning but unsure where to start?
The REMS TA Center offers a suite of
EOP Interactive Tools
for schools, school districts, and IHEs, including their planning
teams and safety leaders, to use for FREE. Included within our
suite of tools are two Web applications (apps) that are easily
accessed from our Website on a computer and Internet browser:
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EOP ASSESS can help you test and enhance your understanding of
elements critical to creating and maintaining a high-quality
emergency operations plan (EOP). This tool may be used to
ensure that planning team members are using the same terminology.
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EOP EVALUATE can help you compare your plan to Federal recommendations
and determine gaps or potential areas of improvement in your EOP. This
tool may be used to enhance plan sections using the information and
resources in the custom output report.
The REMS TA Center recently updated two FREE downloadable tools
that can help you in important EOP development activities
and complement the two Web apps. EOP ASSIST boasts a refreshed
interface and user experience, reformatted plan document, and revitalized
resource toolkit. SITE ASSESS collects feedback from users via a
NEW questionnaire, allows users to create and easily distinguish
templates from assessment files, provides for the ability to
select customized answers when questions are uploaded into
the app, and contains an improved education
facilities section and refined resources.
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EOP ASSIST prompts planning team members through the federally
recommended process and generates a customized and downloadable EOP.
Users must register to download this software app from the REMS
TA Center Website and install it on a server. Information technology
personnel with an intermediate level of expertise in networking,
server configuration, and database configuration is required.
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SITE ASSESS helps site assessment teams examine the safety,
security, accessibility, and emergency preparedness of buildings and
grounds. This mobile app is downloadable from the Google Play and Apple
App stores onto your mobile device with an Android or iOS operating system.
Read more about the EOP Interactive Tools via our flyer.
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Developing a Self-Care Plan at the Start of the School Year
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The role of educators extends beyond academic achievement;
educators play a critical role in the social, psychological,
and physical well-being of students. In this caring and supportive
role, they are often the first to hear about and respond to students
experiencing trauma or recovering from an emergency. These situations
can compound over time, resulting in vicarious (secondary) trauma
and other mental health issues. However, educators can prevent vicarious
trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout by enhancing
their resilience and developing a self-care plan.
The start of the school year is an ideal time for educators
to be intentional about developing a self-care plan
and committing to utilizing resilience strategies on
a regular basis. The REMS TA Center provides educators
with resources and training opportunities to help them
better understand resilience strategies and compassion
fatigue, and to consider the impact of these things
on self-care and the learning environment. Below is a
list of Webinars and a self-paced training with an action
plan that can be used by educators to help them identify
and practice resilience strategies to prepare for
the challenges they may face in the new school year.
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NEW Fact Sheets From the REMS TA Center
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Did you know that the REMS TA Center produces
fact sheets related to EOPs on a variety of topics? Fact sheets are one
of many types of resources that are accessible via the
Publications & Guidance Documents
page of the REMS TA Center Website. You can find them
easily using the Search filter and selecting Type > Fact Sheet.
There, you will find several recently released fact sheets that discuss
strategies for engaging in emergency management planning, developing annexes,
and ensuring EOPs are comprehensive and customized to the building.
Below is a list of the latest fact sheets released by the
REMS TA Center for K-12 schools and IHEs:
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Exploring State School Safety Models With #REMSontheAir
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State education agencies often partner with other state-level offices and entities
to help support schools and school districts with their safety, security,
emergency management, and preparedness programs. These partnerships vary
in their structure, goals, and activities to support each state’s unique needs.
In the first series of our
#REMSontheAir podcast,
we take a closer look at state
school safety partnership models across the country and explore the value of
state-level collaborations for supporting school safety and emergency preparedness
at the state and local levels. Listen to
Part 1
in the series to hear from special guests
from the New York State Education Department about the creation of the
New York State Center for School Safety and its mission to provide
technical assistance and training to schools and school districts throughout the state. Listen to
Part 2
of this series, where you’ll hear about how a partnership between the
Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma City Office for
the Federal Bureau of Investigation has strengthened behavioral
threat assessment processes across their state.
You can stream #REMSontheAir directly through the REMS TA Center Website. We encourage
you to tune in, share episodes with your community, and keep an eye out for new content coming soon!
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