From the Training:
Certified Safe & Loved Practitioner

I was walking down the hall with a principal.

We stopped at a row of newly renovated bathrooms. These weren't traditional school bathrooms with ten or fifteen stalls inside one large room, but individual bathrooms, each with its own door. 

While we were standing there, a female student came bounding out of one. 

I asked her what she thought of the new bathrooms and without missing a beat, she smiled and said, "I love them!" 

I was shocked. “Really? You love them. Why?” 

So simple. So practical. So human. 

As adults, we tend to separate into categories or boxes the things that students actually experience as one life. 

We put school safety over there. Facilities over here. Student wellness somewhere else. Operations has its place, as do administrators and counselors. 

But students don't live that way.
They live one big life rolled all together. 

Our school safety must be the same way! 

We can't keep looking at safety as its own separate category. 

In renovating the bathrooms, the school improved that student’s emotional well-being, hygiene, quality of life…and personal safety. 

That's holistic safety.
That’s Safe & Loved. 

The lines we draw between these things may help us organize the work, but those lines don't exist in the life of the student. 

This young lady was simply excited about her new bathroom.
For her it connected her environment, her health, her daily experience, and her physical protection into a single experience. 

That’s how students experience school.
One life. 

Our approach to keeping them safe must be just as holistic.
It must be Safe & Loved.