TOPHappy Holidays from your Safety in Schools Team!

2018 has been an incredible year for our team. We have completed multiple projects and campaigns with partners and have continued to grow our program in Alberta and beyond throughout Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

Since we began this program in 2011, we have awarded more than 79,000 mastery certificates to students across Western Canada! In the 2017-2018 school year alone, we awarded more than 17,000. In the 2018-2019 school year so far, almost 8,000 certificates have been awarded. 

Keep reading to learn more about the work we have done in this past year and what we have in store for 2019!

Sara
Sara Rooseboom   Program Coordinator  
P: 403.984.6375 
Suite 600, 4838 Richard Rd SW | Calgary AB Canada T3E 6L1
BCBC Pilot Program 

Our team is preparing to get our BC Pilot Program off the ground starting in January. Over the last several months, we have worked with our partners in BC to connect with interested teachers and set them up to explore our courses. 

As of December 2018, we have four schools set up in BC with teachers exploring the program and ready to begin enrolling students in the new year. 

We are also working with teachers in Dawson Creek to include a couple of schools in our upcoming Spring 2019 Speaking Tour. This will be the first time schools outside of Alberta have had the opportunity to participate in one of our speaking tours, though we intend to take our speaking program into SK soon.

Our BC expansion is led by a team of representatives from Safety in Schools, the Construction Foundation of BC, WorkSafe BC and TransCanada Pipelines, all working to integrate Safety in Schools courses, in-school training and equipment, and career building and exploration activities into one accessible program. 

The end result of these efforts will be the launch of a one-stop online platform called FutureBuilder, where students and their teachers are able to track their various career development and exploration activities, including in-school training, workshops, Safety in Schools courses and more. 

SKSaskatchewan Expansion

We continue to build off our successful pilot program in Saskatchewan, with seven new schools added since June of 2018. To date, students in Saskatchewan have mastered more than 1,100 courses through the Safety in Schools program.

Safety in Schools is now available in 21 schools across Saskatchewan. Our team continues to work with our partners at the  Service and Hospitality Safety Association (SHSA)  of Saskatchewan, growing this program and look forward to another year of success in 2019.

FNFocus on First Nations

Over the last couple of years, our team has been focused on increasing our engagement with First Nations schools and communities with the help and leadership of our partners at TransCanada Pipelines. Last year, we included Kainai First Nation School in our spring speaking tour with Daniel Shoemaker. We presented to a group of students who were participating in the school's "tiny homes" project as well as other trades-focused programs.

In 2019, we have two First Nations schools scheduled to participate in our spring speaking tour. These schools are also newly added to our online program and we are working with educators from the Maskwacis Board of Education to promote the use of our online program as they redevelop their welding and other trades programs.
 
ACWorking with the Alberta Construction Safety Association (ACSA)

Coming Soon: Tragedy at the Quarry

In 2014, a 15 year old boy went to work at a gravel crushing site and never came home. The employer responsible for his safety was charged and fined for OH&S infractions. 

Through the Alberta Creative Sentencing Program, the fine that the company responsible was ordered to pay was diverted toward a joint effort between the ACSA, Safety in Schools, the Alberta Sand and Gravel Association (ASGA) and the Alberta Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association (ARBHCA) to produce and deliver appropriate resources to our target audiences about working in this industry, with a special focus on the importance of guarding. 


Our latest course,  Tragedy at the Quarry , will be made available in 2019 and explores the hazards associated with gravel crushing and the very real danger these hazards pose to workers. In this course, students will be shown interviews by the mother of the 15 year old worker whose death was the impetus for this course, as well as the owner of the company that employed him. 

These interviews are intended to help young people understand the far-reaching impact that an incident has on everyone involved and to show just how quickly something can go wrong when working around this kind of equipment.

Propane and Natural Gas Safety at Home

In the fall, we released our newest course,  Propane and Natural Gas Safety at Home . This course explores the hazards involved with propane and natural gas use, storage and transportation and how you can manage risks. 

This course is part of a two part joint project with the ACSA. Our new course focuses on propane safety at home, while the ACSA has developed a new module for their CSTS program focusing on using propane safely in the workplace.

See below for information on how you can access CSTS - including this new Propane Safety module - for free!


Our  Propane and Natural Gas Safety at Home course includes a look at some real-life incidents that have occurred when people did not take proper precautions. 

Topics discussed include barbecue safety, transportation and storage, signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, differences between propane and natural gas, and more.

Accessing CSTS for Free

The ACSA's Construction Safety Training System (CSTS) is an online training program that goes over a variety of health and safety topics and has become a pre-entry requirement for many construction industry worksites in Alberta. If you are planning or even thinking of beginning work in a construction industry, taking CSTS is an important first step.


To request free access to CSTS for your students, teachers can call ACSA Client Services at 1.800.661.ACSA (1.800.661.2272). You will receive a form to add a facilitator and sign a contract for CSTS distribution. Shortly after returning the signed forms, you will receive a user guide for the system and be able to distribute the course.  
 
Students - talk to your teachers about gaining access to this program.
SPRSpring 2019 School Speaking Tour

We are excited to have the opportunity to host another school speaking tour in April and May 2019 with injury survivors. This time we will be visiting six schools in the rural areas surrounding Grande Prairie and Peace River, two First Nations schools in Maskwacis, and two schools in the Dawson Creek area in BC.

We will be splitting these visits between two speakers who have survived traumatic workplace injuries that have left them with long-term injuries. 

This speaking tour will feature presentations from Daniel Shoemaker, who has visited 29 schools with us in the past and reached more than 2700 students, and will also feature a few talks from a new addition to our speaker's bureau, Kelly Pack. 

Kelly suffered a severe crushing injury at the age of 21 and is looking forward to the opportunity to share his story with young people and work with us in further developing his presentation. 

ABCWorking with the Alberta Common Ground Alliance (ABCGA)

Since joining the ABCGA as members in 2015, our Managing Director Ross has become more involved in ongoing projects and campaigns through the Education and Marketing Committee, acting as Vice-Chair of the committee since last year. The committee, headed by Patricia Poulton of TransCanada Pipelines, has a dual focus on informing the public of the importance of safe ground disturbance and on working with industry to implement best practices.

As part of our partnership with the ABCGA, we produced two new Ground Disturbance resources last year that are available publicly on both our website and the ABCGA website. As part of the Education and Marketing Committee, we have also helped promote a series of smaller events targeting workers on the ground and worked with partners across Canada to promote better legislation to protect our underground infrastructure.

We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with so many fantastic partners outside of our own organization, including the ABCGA and its members.

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SURPlease Participate in our Year-End Teachers Survey!
 
One way that you can help our program continue to grow and develop is to provide regular feedback on the work we are doing. We want to know what you think about recent changes to our program platform as well as our most recent course additions.  
 
MOB
Our Content is Now Mobile

Over the summer, our content provider updated their courses to be mobile-friendly. Thanks to hard work by both the IT teams at SwiftLearning and ComplyWorks, all of our THRIL courses are now accessible on any device - phone, tablet, or computer! 

The IT team at ComplyWorks has been hard at work making sure that this integration went smoothly and monitoring the program over the course of the fall semester to keep our functionality up to date. 

Thank you to the project teams at our Founding Partners, Gemini SwiftLearning and ComplyWorkds Ltd. for making this happen!
 
RESAdditional Resources from Safety in Schools

The foundation of our program is the online course library, but what you may not be aware of is that Safety in Schools offers much more than just our courses. Have you checked out our blog or our resource portal? Both contain a wide array of resources and information that can help you stay informed about health and safety, as well as provide some guidance in your career exploration activities.


In the Resource Portal, you will find a variety of resources, including:













The Hole You Dig and  Digger's Guide to Bone Burying were made possible by the Alberta Government through Alberta Labour's Innovation and Engagement Grants program. 

You can learn more about the I&E Grant program here.

Our blog includes a variety of topics from news and updates about our program to timely health and safety advice. We have covered topics such as:
TYThank You to our Sponsors!
 
TransCanada Pipelines (TCPL) has been our lead sponsor for several years running, recently signing on to another three years of funding to keep Safety in Schools growing. TransCanada employees have been instrumental in helping us reach First Nations communities across Alberta as well as getting our team involved with the Alberta Common Ground Alliance and Canadian Common Ground Alliance.

Pictured: Lisa Deck, Ian Jerrard and Patricia Poulton from TransCanada Pipelines Community Engagement, and Ross Wickware, Managing Director and Sara Rooseboom, Program Coordinator at Safety in Schools

The contributions of TCPL, as well as our Founding Partners ComplyWorks and Gemini SwiftLearning, and ongoing infrastructure support from Sphinx Infotech are crucial to keeping our program operating.

These companies are industry leaders investing in the health and safety of our future workforce.





















Thank You, Birchcliff Energy!

We would like to thank Ryan, Dave and the staff at Birchcliff Energy for their very kind donation to Safety in Schools again this year. Birchcliff employees raise funds to contribute to our ongoing program in Western Canada and we are looking forward to expansion into BC, bringing Safety in Schools into the areas where Birchcliff Energy recruits their workforce, such as Dawson Creek BC. It is people like this that make Canada so wonderful. Thank you Birchcliff Energy!

Pictured: Ryan Sloan, HSE Manager, Birchcliff Energy; Dave Humphreys, VP Operations, Birchcliff Energy; and Ross Wickware, Managing Director, Safety in Schools

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USENew Teacher's User Guide

We have created a new Teacher's User Guide to help you become familiar with the new look and feel of our program.

We sent a copy of the new guide to every teacher in our system, but you can always download one from our website or below.

You may also request to participate in an online demonstration / webinar to orient new or returning teachers to the program.



Safety in Schools Foundation | sarar@safetyinschools.ca  | 403.984.6375
Suite 600 - 4838 Richard Road SW
Calgary  AB  T3E 6L1
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