by Dean Gilbert 

The California Department of Education has released the 2012 edition of the Science Safety Handbook for California Public Schools.  Thanks to the efforts of representatives from various state agencies, educational and research institutions, the Science Safety Handbook, available in PDF format, has been thoroughly edited to provide updated information on:

• state and federal legislation affecting science instruction,
• first aid issues in the classroom,
• general laboratory safety precautions,
• safety in the biology, chemistry and physics laboratories,
• legal citations, safety agreements, laboratory safety checklists and tests, field trip permission forms, plus many other ancillary support documents.

An added feature in this 2012 edition is a chapter devoted entirely to Safety in the Elementary Science Classroom. (more…)

by Heather A Marshall

In many schools, teachers are blessed with administrators who understand the difficulty of ensuring safety in a science classroom, and they back teachers in any way they can to help support teachers in their safety  requirements.  However, when the “referral to the office” strategy doesn’t work because students don’t see any consequences for their actions, teachers are required to devise other means of dealing with disruptive and potentially unsafe behaviors in the lab.  (This is assuming the teacher has already conferenced with the student, and with the parents before any referral to the office.)

One such strategy I have used is to exclude a student from the activity by sending him or her to the office to sit (suspend from class for the day), and the student receives a zero for the lab activity.

Another method I have used is to keep disruptive students in the class into the passing period if they waste my class time.  I tell them the amount of time they waste for me in class they can make up during their passing time.  Students are very possessive about their passing time; they like to hang with friends, so this threat often works well.  However, you do have to actually hold them to prove you will do what you say.  I have found this very effective with my constant chatterers and disruptors.

The send-out-with-a zero-for-the-day strategy I have used with students not following laboratory directions, so the “kick out” is for the safety of everyone in the room.  Typically I only have to do this once as well; from then on, the students know I will not deal with inappropriate behavior in the lab.

So even if you are in a district or site where referrals to the office, in terms of discipline, doesn’t work, you can use some of these strategies to take control again.

Heather Marshall teaches CP geology at Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill and is CSTA’s high school director.