Social media safety at school: A simulation exercise for smart, smooth school incident response – whether on campus or it happened over the weekend and gets physical (then digital) at school.

1. Fixing those ‘Monday morning
social media blues’
“With students, what happens at home doesn’t always stay there”

2. Your team
Anne Collier
annecollier@gmail.com
@annecollier
Matt Soeth
mbsoeth@gmail.com
@matthewsoeth

3. The Simulation
○ Table top exercise that simulates
a common occurrence on many
school campuses today
○ Intended to put you in the shoes of
the team that will respond and
handle the situation
Devices are required for this session. Hiya Images/Corbis

4. The Simulation
○ You will be divided into teams to react and respond to
the scenario.
○ Over time, the scenario will be more fully developed and
you will respond to what happens.

5. Suggestions
○ Think about each of the roles in the team [e.g., are you an
educator (teacher), administrator (school principal or district
office), counselor, superintendent, student activities
director, etc.?].

6. The Simulation
Each group will develop a plan with two key products that will
be available after the conference.
1. The internal communication to stakeholders – district
office supervisors, site staff, etc.
2. The email home to parents, understanding that it will also
be shared with the public.

7. The Simulation
1. Gather as a team.
2. Go over the scenario carefully. What do you know? What
don’t you know?
3. Begin building your response. Elect one team member to
take notes.

8. The Simulation
4. During the scenario, you will receive additional
information. Respond to each of the updates as the
scenario unfolds.
5. We will occasionally pause to discuss where we are and
eventually give our report out to the stakeholders.
This exercise works best if approached as a “murder mystery” game. The
more you synthesize the information and role-play, the more useful the
exercise becomes.

9. Scenario
○ As students arrive on campus, you notice a crowd forming. Yelling
ensues, and before you can get over to it, two students go to blows.
Luckily, two campus monitors arrive simultaneously, and the 3 of you are
able separate the students and stop the altercation; one is taken to your
office and the other to the VP’s office 2 doors down.
○ One of the campus monitors tells you they saw several students recording
video of the incident on their devices.
○ By the time the 2 students have gone to class, a video has been posted
on Instagram.

10. Questions?

11. Where Are We?
○ Have you started to build your report plan?
○ Can you make any concrete conclusions?
○ What questions have come up?

12. The Simulation
○ During the interview with Student 1, that student states
that this happened because Student 2 posted
something about their sibling on social media over the
weekend.
○ Your school (district) does not monitor students’ social
media accounts.

13. Scenario Update
○ How can you access the social media incident?
○ You want to access the videos that students took
 From their phones/school iPad
 On Instagram (or wherever)
What are the impacts of this?
SB 178 Electronic Privacy Act
Scott K. (1979) 24 Cal.3d 395, the Calif. Supreme Court Consent

14. Scenario Update
○ The DO wants an update,
compose an email to parents
start on a response plan
contact iCanHelpline via email or 1-
855-997-0409
○Student Response (where
appropriate)
Local news as well as
parents are contacting the
school and the DO inquiring
about safety, school fights,
and social media posts

15. Unveil your communication message
○ Take us through your report. Each include email to DO
(Parents) and Plan
○ What were the factors in your decision making process?
○ Did your report evolve as the scenario became more
clear?

16. Wrap-Up
○ Lessons learned from experience of reporting to
“community”
○ What have you learned?
○ How could this exercise be more useful to you?

17. Thank you!