Back to School Resources
The Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention offers resources for families and caregivers, schools, law enforcement professionals, and mental health professionals as communities begin the 2023-24 academic year. The below list is organized by primary audiences for each resource. Click on the audience below to go directly to that section.
Webinar: School-based Prevention Programming
The third in a four-part series on Improving School Climate & Safety Through Inter-Professional Collaboration. This session focuses on school-based prevention programming and how different examples align with school climate.
Webinar: Fostering Family Engagement in School
This webinar describes how schools can foster family involvement and engagement to increase student feelings of belonging and academic success.
Policy Brief: Creating Safe Schools
This policy brief shares a guide to building a comprehensive school safety plan that includes a combination of prevention, point of immediate response, and recovery strategies to reduce the likelihood of violence occurring, mitigate the effect of violent incidents when they do occur, and attend to community needs following violence, respectively.
Policy Brief: Locked Firearms and Child Access Prevention Laws
This policy brief shares information on safe storage and child access prevention policies that may decrease risks for unintentional firearm injury, suicide, carriage of a firearm to school by youth, and school/mass shootings.
Podcast: What is School Safety
In this podcast, guests share what school safety means to them and describe the importance of having a Comprehensive School Safety Plan.
Guide: Behavioral Threat Assessment & Management (BTAM) at a Glance
This guide provides a brief overview on Behavioral Threat Assessment & Management (BTAM) as part of a comprehensive approach to school safety plans.
Guide: Restorative Practices at a Glance
This guide provides a brief overview of restorative practices, which are intended to involve all parties affected by a specific offense or situation in order to understand and addressthe problem.
Guide: Social Emotional Learning at a Glance
This guide provides a brief overview on social emotional learning as a prevention-based approach to reducing conflict and violence.
Guide: Parents' Guide to Home Firearm Safety
This short guide describes best practices for ensuring firearm safety in the home and the places where children play.
Webinar: School-based Prevention Programming
The third in a four-part series on Improving School Climate & Safety Through Inter-Professional Collaboration. This session focuses on school-based prevention programming and how different examples align with school climate.
Webinar: Essential Elements of School Threat Assessment
This webinar reviews the essential features of school threat assessment, how and when it should occur, and how it differs from other forms of threat assessment.
Webinar: Collaboration and Information Sharing
The fourth in a four-part series on Improving School Climate & Safety Through Inter-Professional Collaboration. This session examines information sharing and its connection to school climate.
Policy Brief: Creating Safe Schools
This policy brief shares a guide to building a comprehensive school safety plan that includes a combination of prevention, point of immediate response, and recovery strategies to reduce the likelihood of violence occurring, mitigate the effect of violent incidents when they do occur, and attend to community needs following violence, respectively.
Podcast: Evidence-Based Strategies for School Safety
In this episode of the Population Healthy podcast, we speak with two University of Michigan researchers who are leading efforts to provide evidence-based strategies to promote school safety and a Michigan prosecutor who is leading an interdisciplinary task force with the goal of mitigating firearm violence.
Podcast: How Anonymous Reporting Systems in Schools Can Reduce Violence
Drs. Hsing-Fang Hsieh and Justin Heinze, join this episode of Michigan Minds to discuss the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention research, how the field of firearm injury prevention is growing, and their recent research with the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation to better understand how effective anonymous reporting systems in schools can reduce violence and increase student connectedness.
Guide: School Safety Communications Planning
This guide is intended to serve as a quick-start to help school leaders plan and share school safety-related initiatives and news with their communities
Guide: Intro to Restorative Practices
This guide allows for any school personnel to learn what restorative practices are, the evidence supporting their success, and considerations for implementing these practices in a school setting.
Guide: Considerations for Social Media Monitoring and Response
This document highlights example practices, concerns, and methods for social media monitoring in a school setting. Also included is a real-world example of logistical considerations one school district dealt with as they implemented a social media monitoring system.
Self-Paced Training: Empowering Youth
This self-paced training provides an overview of youth empowerment theory and shares examples of youth empowering programs.
Self-Paced Training: School and Law Enforcement Partnerships
This self-paced training is designed to help schools and law enforcement agencies discuss what form they want their partnerships to take, and to consider important issues related to these partnerships.
Self-Paced Training: Lockdown Drills
This training is designed to educate learners on how to use lockdown drills as part of a comprehensive school safety and emergency preparedness efforts. The training also shares how to conduct lockdown drills in a trauma-informed manner and evaluate them for effectiveness.
Toolkit: Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Schools
This toolkit outlines a framework for implementing Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented approaches in schools and school districts.
Toolkit: K-12 Bystander Reporting
This toolkit includes strategies and guidance for safety reporting programs and encouraging bystander reporting.
Video: School Climate and Student Fear: The Roles of Students and Teachers
Dr. Chris Melde and his team discuss their research into the ways school climate and previous experiences of victimization can affect a student’s feelings of fear and perceptions of safety.
Video: Systematic Review: Anonymous Reporting Systems for School-Based Violence Prevention
This video describes a systematic review of published literature from the last 25 years on the use of Anonymous Reporting Systems (ARS) in schools of all levels (K-12, colleges, public, private, etc.) throughout the United States.
Program: Michigan School Safety Initiative
The Michigan School Safety Initiative is focused on working with all K-12 schools in the state to provide training and technical assistance to improve school safety and prevent school violence, including school shootings, through the implementation of evidence-based safety programs and strategies.
Chart: A Positive Youth Development Approach to School Safety
Learn more about the National Center for School Safety’s approach to school safety with this comprehensive model, which is designed to help practitioners and policymakers understand how the strategies they choose may be related to the larger context of school safety.
Webinar: Essential Elements of School Threat Assessment
This webinar reviews the essential features of school threat assessment, how and when it should occur, and how it differs from other forms of threat assessment.
Policy Brief: Creating Safe Schools
This policy brief shares a guide to building a comprehensive school safety plan that includes a combination of prevention, point of immediate response, and recovery strategies to reduce the likelihood of violence occurring, mitigate the effect of violent incidents when they do occur, and attend to community needs following violence, respectively.
Policy Brief: Locked Firearms and Child Access Prevention Laws
This policy brief shares information on safe storage and child access prevention policies that may decrease risks for unintentional firearm injury, suicide, carriage of a firearm to school by youth, and school/mass shootings.
Guide: Intro to Restorative Practices
This guide provides any school personnel with the resource to learn what restorative practices are, the evidence supporting their success, and considerations for implementing these practices in a school setting.
Self-Paced Training: School and Law Enforcement Partnerships
This self-paced training is designed to help schools and law enforcement agencies discuss what form they want their partnerships to take, and to consider important issues related to these partnerships.
Video: The First Five Things An SRO Should Do
In this video, learn the first five steps you should take as a new SRO, including how to clarify your role and authority with school leadership, getting to know the staff and students, the importance of knowing your building inside and out, and how to become an immediate presence in your new community.
Webinar: Essential Elements of School Threat Assessment
This webinar reviews the essential features of school threat assessment, how and when it should occur, and how it differs from other forms of threat assessment.
Guide: Intro to Restorative Practices
This guide allows for any school personnel to learn what restorative practices are, the evidence supporting their success, and considerations for implementing these practices in a school setting.
Toolkit: Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Schools
This toolkit outlines a framework for implementing Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented approaches in schools and school districts.
Video: School Climate and Student Fear: The Roles of Students and Teachers
Dr. Chris Melde and his team discuss their research into the ways school climate and previous experiences of victimization can affect a student’s feelings of fear and perceptions of safety.
Guide: Returning to School After a Crisis: A Guide to Addressing Traumatic Events at School
This guide provides school staff with strategies to support students following traumatic events. It contains lessons learned, discussion tips, and mental health resources to help cope with a trauma response.
Self-Paced Training: Science of Firearm Safety Among Children & Teens Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
This self-paced course covers a range of firearm injury topics including: firearm-related suicide, unintentional firearm injury, firearm-related community and youth violence, firearm-related intimate partner violence, school and mass shootings, and officer-involved shootings. Through lectures and interviews from leading firearm injury researchers, and activities such as, readings, discussion boards, and quizzes, learners can become familiar with the epidemiology, prevention strategies, and policy efforts related to pediatric firearm injury prevention.
Website: Crisis Navigation
This website features a wide variety of resources that help support caregivers, educators, mental health professionals, and youth when their lives and communities are impacted by tragedies.