PHQP_0018 More Hazard Mitigation

In PHQP_0018 More Hazard Mitigation, Jeff draws on his recent 50-mile walk to explore hazard mitigation, sharing practical strategies for reducing unseen dangers to make risky activities safer for children and educators.
Episode Video
Watch Now: PHQP_0018 More Hazard Mitigation
Episode Notes
PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation
PHQP_0004 Learning Is Risky
5 Hazard Mitigation Strategies
Understanding Danger, Hazard, And Risk
Hazard
The More Hazard Mitigation Transcript
Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing Play on with the show.
So I'm just back from another road trip out there doing live in-person early learning professional development training. Was up in Minnesota, Rochester, Minnesota, talking to family child care providers. Great group.
I've been with them before. And Minnesota, back in the days when I was just getting started as a trainer, was really supportive of that. And so I saw some faces that I've known for a long time and some wonderful, wonderful early learning professionals, which was great.
I love doing stuff online, but getting out there and seeing people in person, especially from the olden days, was good. So on to this episode, we're talking about hazard mitigation some more. Now, we've talked about it in the past.
I wanted to spend this episode going over specifically hazard mitigation in relation to the 50 mile walk I did a few weeks back. Because I think it's an example of the kind of the thought process that we can use when we mitigate hazards. When we're considering doing scary things, like I talked about last episode, in our own lives or in supporting children and doing their scary thing and taking risks.
And so to recap a little bit, a danger is anything that could cause harm. Lots of dangers out there. A hazard is a danger that is not readily seen or predicted.
And so in early learning settings, one of our primary jobs is hazard mitigation. We're trying to see the things that could cause harm to children that they're not going to anticipate or predict readily. And then a risk is a choice.
It's a choice to do a thing or not to do it based on your experience, based on your knowledge. And it's something that could or that may or may not cause harm. So risks are choices.
And we don't need to worry about risks in our early learning settings as much as we need to worry or think about hazard mitigation. And so you can think of hazard mitigation as making the scary things less scary. So again, it comes up for playgrounds, for example.
Good hazard mitigation means that before kids head out to the outdoor play space, that somebody does a playground check. They make sure that there's not cat poop in the sandbox and there's not broken glass in the resilient surfacing under the slide. And that the fence is secure so that there's a gate open so the two-year-olds don't wander off.
And those kind of things, you know, making sure the swing chains are bolted tight and that the slide isn't too wobbly. All of those kind of things are making the playground less dangerous for the little kids that are going to be out there playing and exploring. So hazard mitigation, making scary things less scary.
Now, with my walk, one of the first things I had to consider was the when, the timing of it. I couldn't do it, I lived down on the Gulf Coast. I couldn't do it in July or August because the heat and humidity would kill me, even in the evenings.
There's a lot of evenings, nights in the summer when it only gets down in the 80s and it's like 90% humidity. So I needed to do it, if I was going to do it, I needed to do it before the beginning of May, middle of May. And otherwise it was going to have to get put off until October, September, October, November.
And so the scheduling was important, but also when in the day I did it. Because the sun can kick your butt down here. And so my plan to mitigate hazards that were kind of...