The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome to the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools, along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be. Let's talk about it.

Hello, hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here for today's episode.

I'm going to start right out with the not so fun stuff. Today's episode is super important. I really hope that everyone will listen to it and share it.

However, it contains a lot of heavy topics, and I understand that not everyone might be in a place right now to listen to topics about the potential harm of humans in general, and specifically children and our students. And that's what today's episode is about, of course, preventing any kind of harm from coming into our studio spaces. But if that's something that you're just not in a place to listen to, we cover a variety of potential situations that could put people in our studio spaces in danger, and I just want to mentally prepare you. Step away if that's not something that you're in a place to hear right now. If you think you can, and you're thinking like I did when I first started broaching this topic, like, wow, I really have been just kind of ignoring this topic altogether as a dance teacher and just hoping that everything continues to run smoothly within the studio spaces that I step into, then I would really, really encourage you to continue listening.

Now, it's not all doom and gloom. I definitely approached this conversation with so much excitement to speak to today's guest. If you are already a member of the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook, you might remember that many, many months ago, I had posted after something happened in my dance studio, which thankfully nobody was harmed or anything, but it just got me thinking about emergency preparedness.

And I wasn't sure who to talk to about this. I was like, do I talk to like an EMT? a firefighter? Are there people that do trainings on this? Should I be talking to a leader in the childhood education space? And I did get some hits. And thank you so much to everyone that did give me feedback on that.

But to be honest, I found today's guest through another podcast talking about a similar topic, but within a different field. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is the person, like, in the world to talk to about this topic. And I just sent out an email and crossed my fingers and I got an email back, which was so exciting.

And at the time, he was flying all over the world, doing different training, super busy. It took a few months to get him on the show, but I finally did. We had such a long and in-depth conversation covering so many different topics to prepare for various different situations and emergencies that could arise.

And again, I am just super, super excited to have the opportunity to share this incredibly important information with you. So let me tell you a little bit about this guest today. I have Andy Roszak on the show.

He is the founder and chief executive officer at the Institute for Childhood Preparedness. He also serves as chief of preparedness, health and environment for the region two headstart association. And as an adjunct professor in the school of community and environmental health at Old Dominion university.

Since 2015, Andy has been working full-time on emergency preparedness response and recovery issues impacting the early childhood sector. Roszak was formerly the senior director of emergency preparedness at Child Care Aware of America, senior public health advisor for the U S department of health and human services emergency care coordination center and senior director of environmental health pandemic preparedness and catastrophic response at the national association of county and city health officials. Roszak began his emergency preparedness career as a firefighter paramedic, and is certified as a hazardous materials technician.

And he's also served as health policy fellow for the United States Senate budget and health education, labor and pensions committees during the 110th and 111th Congress. As if that weren't enough, Andy Roszak is also admitted to practice law in Illinois, the district of Columbia and before the U S Supreme court and holds a certificate in early childhood leadership from a little place called Harvard. So I don't think I need to say anymore.

Let's just get into it and let Andy talk to us about what he does best. Please join me in welcoming Andy Roszak to the show. Andy, thank you so much for being here.

Andy
Well, thank you. It's great to be here. I'm excited to chat today and figure out how we can enhance the safety of all of our dance programs throughout the country.
It's a topic that honestly, it doesn't get a lot of attention. So I'm really happy to be here and talk about these issues.

Maia
Yes.

I'm so happy you're here. I really appreciate it. I actually had started thinking about this topic last year when I was in the middle of teaching class and a parent came in and said, just so you know, a tree fell down right outside the studio and is blocking the road.

I don't know if parents are going to all be able to get here to pick up their kids on time. And thankfully, like it was fine. It was not a big deal.

Everything was fine, but it really got me thinking. And at that point, I was like, who do I even talk to about this? Like who, you know, who handles this? Because even though I've taught at a number of different studios, I've never really gotten a specific like safety briefing or here's what the policy is for this and this. And so I just think it's something that dance teachers should be talking about more.

And if it's okay with you, I kind of just want to like rapid fire hit you with a number of different potential scenarios and hear your thoughts on what dance teachers can do to a try and have a plan in place. And then also maybe some tips on what to do if you're like in the thick of it and there's there's not a plan. What are some some ways we can be prepared? Does that sound good?

Andy
It sounds great. I'm open for anything. So let's go for it.

Maia
Okay, so starting out, you know, let's say best case scenario.

We're not dealing with an emergency situation, but we want to have a plan in place. Can you just start by talking a little bit about what a communication plan might look like to make sure that parents and teachers are prepared for how to go about communicating in the event that something arises?

Andy
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll say, you know, communication in all these emergencies are always the most challenging part.

I think everyone just agrees that like no matter what after action report you read after an emergency disaster or something bad that's happened, it's like always pages that are written about communication. So I'm glad we're starting there. And I'll preface this with a couple of like big caveats.

Right. First off, I I'm a preparedness guy. I've been doing this my whole adult professional life, but I'm also the father of a two year old and a four year old.

And my sister actually works at a dance studio as well. So both my little girls go to dance. We love it.

My sister is deep into it. Yeah. So I truly understand the culture and the passion and some of the chaos that comes in the dance world.

So, you know, the other couple of big things I think we just have to be honest about is if you've seen one dance studio or one dance program, you've seen one, right? They're all so unique. They're all located in different spots. Some programming goes for hours and hours and maybe even, you know, weeks.

Other programs go for 30, 45, you know, 60 minutes and that's it. So I think that has to kind of be acknowledged here as we talk at the beginning, because you know, just like early childhood, if you see in one child care program or one head start, you've kind of seen one. We're in all different buildings.

We're in shared spaces. We're in our own spaces. We're in commingled with other businesses or organizations.

And I know the same is true for the dance world. You know, and that being said, that also leads to kind of our capabilities, right? Some dance studios are going to have full time staff that are there consistently Monday through Friday and even the weekends, 40 plus hours a week. Others are temporary, part time and even hourly that come in or maybe even just, you know, as needed, what we would call PRN, of course, in the medical community.

So all that stuff to say, like there's some uniqueness here and there's some challenges that go around kind of with this on the staffing side, on the operation side. And then, you know, we start thinking about the parent side or the guardian side or the custodial side. There's some real challenges there, too, because, you know, maybe it's it's not mom or dad or any of the parents that are dropping the kids off.

Maybe it's the babysitter. Maybe it's the nanny. Maybe it's the neighbor.

Maybe it's two families going, you know, sharing a carpool and stuff. So, you know, so all that's really important when we start thinking about our communication plan is how do we reach the right people at the right time in the right methodology? And there's so many different avenues that we've got now. But we know just from all the data and research, you know, emails are only opened about 15 percent of the time.

So if you're working with a program and, you know, their only avenue is, hey, we're going to email the parents or we're going to post on Facebook or whatever, you know, that's not going to reach everybody. You know, by the same token, even I've got programs that'll want to call people like, oh, gosh, the power is off. We're not open today.

We're going to just call people and let them know, well, you know, we're not going to reach everybody that way either. Parents are at work and maybe they can't answer the phone or maybe they just don't have the number on their phone. They, oh, it's another spam call and they ignore it or they're in a meeting or whatever have you, you know, so that's challenging as well.

The one thing in the communications that we see most frequently that really do cut across demographics and kind of have that ease of use are text messages. And it's interesting when you dig at the data, you know, 99 percent of text messages are read and opened. And 97 percent of those are read within the first three minutes.

So, you know, when you think about it nowadays, you can get it on your watch. You can get it, you know, pretty much everywhere in your car and everything else. So I will say most programs are switching more to a texting platform.

You know, we actually happen to have our own that we developed over the years because we wanted something cheap and efficient and effective and easy to use. And I will say it's a tool that we don't just think about for emergencies and disasters. We think about, you know, tuition reminders or reminders about rehearsal time or whatever have you, just, you know, ways to keep in touch with the parents and families.

And that's, I think, really important when you think about all this emergency preparedness stuff. We really fall back on what is familiar to us. We fall back on what we know.

We fall back on what is kind of routine. And the programs that I see that do, quite honestly, the worst are the programs that set up this crazy elaborate system and it never gets used. And then, heaven forbid, you need it for an emergency and nobody knows how to use it or they don't remember the password and they can't log in or they don't have any of this stuff.

So I think that's important as we, you know, think about our communication strategies. How do we make this so it's routine, so that parents are used to getting information from us in this way? It's tested, all that kind of stuff, because if we do truly need to communicate in an emergency, it can't be time to, like, practice all this out for the first time. Right.

And that's a little bit different, too. And I think that's probably something to acknowledge just up front here, too, is that, you know, most of the time we talk about licensed child care programs. I mean, those are so heavily regulated, right? We have ratios and we can't deviate from that.

And we have, you know, all these kind of things. When we start talking about the dance world, it gets a little bit unregulated, doesn't it? And we don't necessarily have those tight of controls and those tight of ratios and those staffing requirements, which, again, you know, in an emergency, I think everybody knows the more adults we have, the better it's going to go. So, you know, thinking kind of about communication, not only talking to the parents or the guardians or the custodians of those children, but also thinking about internally, how do we communicate with our staff? How do we talk to people in our building or nearby our building? You know, and I'm not just talking about the dance teachers.

I'm talking about any adult that may be able to help us in an emergency can be called upon. And certainly those programs in shared spaces, if you happen to, I don't know, rent space from a church or a Lions Club or a VFW or whatever unique situation you find yourself in, if you have other adults that are around you during your operating hours, I would certainly encourage you to reach out and have this discussion with them and say, hey, in an emergency, it's kind of all hands on deck. And we're hoping that we can incorporate you into our planning.

And, you know, hopefully you'd be willing to lend a helping hand in those types of situations. So, you know, I think there's a bunch of different things there when we think about communication. So how are we going to do it from a baseline? How are we going to talk to our parents, our guardians, our custodials? Do we have the appropriate contact information? Where does that live? Is it in a binder somewhere? Is it on a software? Is it on a Google Drive? And then to your point, you know, starting to think about kind of those more regular natural disasters and occurrences, if we don't have power or we're not able to get inside of our facility or our building, what does that do to that emergency contact list? Does that make it harder to access? Does that go away? Do we have any kind of redundancy built into the system? Just in case, heaven forbid, the power is out, the building is on fire and you can't go back inside.

Those are things I think that are important to consider as we talk about communication as well.

Maia
Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think as a dance teacher, like I've thought about a lot of different emergency scenarios and like, oh, what would I do in this? But if that was communicated across the board from the get-go, it would just make me feel more comfortable in case something did arise. So I definitely can appreciate that.

Hopefully, it never comes to, you know, the point where any of us have to deal with any of this, but let's just talk through some kind of practical steps of what we might need to do in case of an emergency. And this is also going to be super geographically influenced, but can you talk a little bit just to start about some of those weather emergencies? Like, what do you see most commonly with weather emergencies? Maybe tornadoes, floods, fires, I think have been right at the top of mind, at least in the western part of the United States right now. So can you just talk me through some common scenarios and what are some initial steps that we should maybe be thinking about being prepared to take?

Andy
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And, you know, we'll start kind of with the fire emergencies just because, honestly, every school in the country does fire drills every month, every child care program is required by licensure to do fire drills, but the same isn't necessarily true of the dance studios, you know? So I think that's a real interesting gap when we start thinking about it. And, you know, we go, I was a fireman for almost 10 years of my life, so this is near and dear to my heart. And you go all the way back to the 1950s in Chicago with this horrific Our Lady of Angels fire where we had 92 children and three nuns actually got killed in this fire.

It was really as a result of blocked exits and people not knowing what to do and malfunctioning, you know, communication systems and kind of all this. But that's really what was the genesis of all this mandates of fire codes and fire drills in schools and whatnot. So the good news is the children that are coming to our program are probably getting this education elsewhere, right? So, you know, I was chuckling to myself in preparation for our chat today and I said, you know, the one, my four-year-old, she's in a dance school right now and she only goes like an hour, right? That's it.

That's her hour. And I was thinking like, you know, I'm this big preparedness guy and I'm all about making sure people know what to do and all that. But boy, I would be kind of annoyed if that one precious hour she's in dance class, someone said, hey, that's a good idea.

Let's have a fire drill. Because that was 30 minutes, right? So, you know, and again, I'm like the most sympathetic parent like ever. I want you to be prepared and all that.

But also like I'm paying a premium for this dance class. I want her to dance for the hour, not do a fire drill. So I guess that's something that we probably need to just think about.

Like we don't necessarily have the opportunity to practice like you would in a child care or elementary school or things like that, which means it really gets more back on the staff to have that plan and know what to do. And again, that is challenging, especially when you think about some of the hourly employees. Nobody's paying the employee.

Why don't you come in a few hours early and we'll talk about emergency preparedness like that. I know that that's just not happening. So it's really those kind of critical times where can you build this into staff meetings or staff trainings or those moments that are kind of in between classes and whatnot and think about this.

And of course, with any of these emergencies that we're talking about, fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, hurricane. I mean, hurricane's a little easier because you see it coming. But any of these kind of sudden onset emergencies, accountability is going to be really key.

And if you pull up in the big red fire truck and you get out and the first question we're going to ask is, do you have everybody? Is everybody accounted for? Do you have some kind of accountability system for the kids and also for the staff too? Do you know where everybody's at and you know everybody's safe? And again, I know we have a mixed bag and I've certainly seen it in my lifetime just of some programs are really good about signing in officially and formally. Other programs, it's chaos at drop-off time, right? And especially if you've got it towards the beginning of a session, you don't necessarily know all the kids yet. Kids are in and out.

Sometimes they come, sometimes they don't. So having that consistency and really making sure that you know the children in your program and have that kind of accountability is super important when we think about fire. The other thing, of course, is just do you know where to go? Do you know how to get out of your building? Do you know where to go? We always kind of chuckle because it seems like in these fire scenarios, what everybody loves to do is they love to come right out the door and then they love to come and just stand right in front of the building or right in the parking lot.

And of course, that's where the big fire trucks are going to come screaming, lights and sirens in a big hurry to get there because if there's a call involving kids, we're doing all we can to get there as quickly as we can. So you may want to rethink that. Probably not the safest thing just to stand right in front of the building and moving a little bit away or off to the side or off to the grass would be much more helpful for everybody.

But this is something that doesn't require a tremendous amount of time to talk through with the staff. I would say the basics really are, first off, you know the address of the building. And I know that sounds ridiculous and stupid, but I tell you, all the years I've been doing this, about 40% of the people that you work with, they're not going to know the address of that building.

They just don't know. They get in their car, they put it in their GPS, they drive there and they never really think about it. And the reason why that's super important is most of these 911 calls nowadays are coming in via cell phone.

And with cell phone technology, it's sad because it's great on everything else, right? If you want to order an Uber or a Lyft or Uber Eats right to your door or a pizza or whatever, like we know exactly where you are and it shows up magically and GPS and all this stuff. It doesn't work that way with 911. It's so ridiculous, right? We've got this antiquated 911 system that was built, you know, years before cell phones were a thing.

And quite honestly, it's a government system and it's, you know, all municipalities, all counties, all states have different systems. It's been a real struggle to get this upgraded to a way that we can really get some good GPS data and find out exactly pinpointed, you know, where you're at. So we have a general idea.

It's getting much better. And by the way, we rolled out nationwide texting to 911, which I don't think people know about. So you can actually send a text message to 911 now if you need to get help.

I will say calling is still, you know, the preferred way just because we can gather so much more data if you call, right? We can hear the tone of voice. We can hear what's going on in the background. We can ask you questions much quicker, whereas the text message, as everybody appreciates, like you lose all that background, you lose the tone, you lose the excitement in the voice or the scaredness in the voice or whatever.

But, you know, you think about several things, domestic violence and whatnot, where texting is a good option. But I will say, you know, it's much slower. So, you know, the time the message gets to the dispatch, the time they read it, the time they write back to you, that obviously builds in time.

You can't send pictures. You can't send videos yet. Some places are working on that, but right now it's not nationwide or anything.

And, you know, you really can't send emojis and those types of things either. But, you know, it's something that's out there. Again, I don't think the word's been out very well that texting the 9-1-1 is out there, but that's certainly something to think about.

So knowing the address, knowing how to call for help, and then, again, just something really simple about, you know, knowing your exit routes and even knowing how to get that fire extinguisher off the wall. Eighty-five percent of adult Americans do not know how to get the fire extinguisher off the wall, which I think is just astonishing. We walk by these things all day, every day, but like no one ever actually takes the time to tell you, hey, here's how you use this in the event of an emergency.

So, you know, just those couple of things would really make you better and more prepared. And then, of course, getting more into that kind of accountability conversation about, you know, how do you sign kids into your individual classes? Is that, you know, the teacher that has that responsibility? Is there somebody at the front desk? Is it management? Is this being tracked just in my mind? Is it being written down on paper? Are you using some kind of an app that does this attendance roster? You know, what does that system look like? And, again, heaven forbid an emergency happens, the big red fire truck pulls up and says, how many kids do you have? Who's missing? Who's accounted for? You know, really thinking through how would you answer that question in a really timely manner, because that's going to be super important. So, I think those are some things to think about, obviously, at the fire side, but also for other emergencies, too.

Maia
Yeah, absolutely. Now, I'd hate to even talk about it. But, unfortunately, anytime, you know, there's a story in the news, I think about it all over again as a dance teacher with my kiddos, which would be like an active shooter situation. Can you talk me through some considerations for that?

Andy
Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's certainly warranted. You know, a new data point came out earlier this year. One out of every 15 Americans have been present at a mass shooting in this country.

That's crazy. And mass shooting, I'm saying, you know, four more people shot. So, one out of 15 people, and it's, you know, I've been teaching well over a decade on this, and it's very interesting.

You teach a class, and it's very rare now that I don't have somebody in the class that's actually been involved in one of these situations. I mean, it's really, it's crazy. Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's being paranoid. I don't think it's being a prepper or anything crazy. I think it's just, sadly, the reality that we have in the United States.

And, you know, in addition to being a preparedness guy, I'm also a licensed attorney. And I think a lot about, ethically, what is our responsibility? And then legally, what is our responsibility to? And, you know, we talk about it a lot in early childhood and in elementary school, middle school, but we really have the three C's. We have the care, we have the custody, we have the control of those children that are at our program.

And, you know, care, custody, and control equals a massive legal responsibility for ensuring they're safe, and they're protected, and we have plans, and we practice plans, and all that. And heaven forbid something bad happens, you've already got a very, very sympathetic client, because you're going to look bad no matter what. Something bad happened, a child gets hurt, a child get injured, heaven forbid a child gets killed.

You have a very sympathetic plaintiff that comes in, and you as the defendant are going to kind of already be on the defensive saying, how did you let this happen? Why did you let this happen? How could this happen at your place? So that's, those are very hard legal uphill battles to fight. And most lawsuits nowadays after COVID, they're lasting three to five years. And you think about waking up and just every day replaying this, gosh, if I did this, if I did that, if I had this plan, this policy, if I practiced this, or it's just, it's really tough to live through that, you know, every day for, like I said, three to five years.

Yeah. So, you know, active shooter stuff, it's really basic. And the nice thing is the kids, depending on their age, they may be getting some of this at their school.

So thinking about what, you know, what age of children you're in, and I literally, I wrote the book, the books are here somewhere. I wrote the book on active shooter preparedness for early childhood. So we are teaching literally zero to five years old how to do this in an age appropriate way.

And our teachers at those early childhood programs are doing the same. So now the wording may be different. You know, we don't traditionally use active shooter and those kinds of scary words around our young children because we don't want to scare them.

We want our childcare programs to be a place of happiness and hope and all that kind of stuff. Whereas our older children in elementary, middle, and high school are certainly going to know what this is more so than the young kids. So again, it's really all about that awareness.

It's about paying attention to our surroundings. You know, you do have that opportunity to interact with your families, which I think is a real plus for us. Now, again, I'm using big strokes of the brush here because I know it's going to be different in different places.

And some cases you might just see the kid and the kid just walks right in and maybe you don't have much interaction with the parents or guardians. But you know, in those opportunities where you do have some interaction with the family, you know, pay attention, right? This isn't like the 1980s when we used to think like people just quote unquote went postal and snapped one day. We know that's not what happens.

These are, you know, events that build up over time. And as you I'm sure can attest, you know, pretty much in every active shooter event in the aftermath, there was so many warning signs. There were so many things that people missed.

There were so many different pieces of the puzzle that sadly didn't get put together. So you think about like if you have a parent that comes in and every day they're happy, go lucky, and they're so nice and they're so outgoing and so friendly. And then you noticed a marked change in that, you know, demeanor.

That could be a sign, right? Maybe a conversation. Hey, everything okay, Mr. Jones? I noticed, you know, you're a little off today or it looks like you're not having such a good day. Everything okay? You know, even that little conversation because that's the data point we're never going to get.

Like how many of these get prevented because there's intervention? I guarantee it's a lot, right? So that's important. And then of course, paying attention to the kids, right? Are the kids acting odd? Are the kids saying things that are troubling? You know, we talk all the time about mandatory reporters and what that looks like. Obviously, if a kid comes in, they're all bruised up.

That's a pretty clear-cut case. Whereas if you have a kid coming in that's saying some stuff that's a little troubling to hear, a little bit more of a challenging case. But certainly, you know, opportunities there to get involved and even contact law enforcement if you think that's warranted.

So other things, you know, kids that have regressed, right? If they're potty trained and all of a sudden now they're not. If they have big changes of mood, if they, you know, used to be so excited to come to dance and then pick up was never a big problem. But now you see them lingering, you see them afraid, or you see them crying, you see them don't wanting to go home.

Like these are all big indicators that we should be paying attention to. And the challenge here, quite honestly, is there's not one thing. I wish I could just say, if you point to this, like, wow, there's trouble.

But it runs the whole gambit, as you know. So that awareness that, you know, situational awareness of kind of what are our parents looking like when they come in? What are the kids looking like when they come in? What kind of neighborhood are we in? Are there other things that happen to be in our neighborhood that we should be aware of? One of the most troubling things, I think, to me since around 2005 is we've had a pretty major shift in how active shooters operate. If you think about, you know, back in 1999 and Columbine and those types of active shooter events, pretty much the shooters would come in.

And usually it's one shooter. History has kind of showed us that. So the shooter would come in, do a bad thing, and then the shooter would either kill themselves or be killed by the police.

And that was pretty much how these things went for years and years and years. And then you start to see a pretty dramatic shift, I would say around 2005-ish with the Parkland, Florida shooting there at the high school, where the shooter came in. He was, you know, used to be a student there, came in and shot and killed a bunch of his former classmates.

And then we saw something we hadn't really seen before. That shooter just walked right out the door. And he was loose in the community for about an hour and a half.

You know, he went to a Walmart. He went to a Subway restaurant. He just went to all these other places in the community.

And that's kind of the same pattern we've been seeing now, that these active shooters are much more fluid than they have historically been. And that's always a little bit troubling to me because that means like the bad thing doesn't necessarily need to start at your place, but it could very well end at your place or find its way to your place.

So, you know, that's why I'm always getting on our child care programs, like we've got to lock our doors, we've got to control our entryway, we've got to really pay attention to who's coming and who's going, do they belong, do they not belong? All these things are early indicators. And, you know, the sooner we can recognize something is out of place or doesn't look right or is potentially a threat, the more time we have to respond, right? And I'm using the word respond purposely. I'm not saying react because I want this to be a response.

I want this to be rehearsed. I want this to be practiced. I want this to be something that you thought about in advance.

When the fire department gets a call, we respond to that call. We don't say react and say, oh my gosh, what do we do? And try to make up a plan on the spot. That's not how things work, so thinking about how can you control your entryway? How can you have visibility into what's going on in your community? You know, most of us in the dance world and most of us, quite honestly, in the child care world, we're never going to get those emergency alerts from the police.

If you're at an elementary, a middle, a high school, odds are you've got a school resource officer or a police officer positioned at the school already. If there's a escaped convict on the loose, if there's an active shooter in the community, if there's a bank robbery down the street from your school, you're probably going to know about it, right? But for us in the dance community, we're not going to get those calls. We're not going to know.

So it's really all about that situational awareness. Are you hearing a lot of things that are out of the ordinary? Are you hearing police sirens? Are you hearing police helicopters? Are you seeing, you know, things that, again, are just not ordinary for your particular neighborhood or your area? Those are all really important stuff to pay attention to. So I'm trying to kind of get you there and say, like, there's a lot of building blocks before, like, the person actually even walks in with the gun, right? These are all things that I think we could have in place, all things that we could kind of look at our mindset and be more aware.

And then, you know, building off of that, of course, we need that plan for if that bad thing does happen, where are we going to go? And, you know, again, kind of the mantra has been, you know, run, hide and fight, which, you know, it is what it is. I don't think it's the best mantra we have. But, you know, essentially, and again, it's going to depend on the age of the students that are in your class.

I mean, my, she's what, 18 months now, I guess. So she's, you know, still technically a one-year-old. She can walk pretty well now.

But, you know, just six months ago, when she was a year old, she wasn't walking very well. Certainly, even now at 18 months, she can walk well, but she can't do stairs. Whereas my four, almost five-year-old, oh, my gosh, she can, you know, run a triathlon tomorrow and it wouldn't bother her.

So really knowing the capabilities of the kids that are in your class is going to be important to help dictate which response is actually going to be most appropriate. You know, if you're in a class with four, five, six, seven, and older, running may be a very great option. But again, just like with the fire drills, like, do you know the exits? Do you know how to get out? Do you know where to go? And spoiler alert here, like, if your life is in imminent danger and the kid's life is in imminent danger, there's really no rules at that point.

So if you can, like, get out your classroom door and run to your parking lot and get to your car, I don't care about car seats at that point, right? I'm throwing all those kids in my car and we're getting the heck down the road as fast as we can. The heck with car seats. So, you know, we've got some flexibility there when it comes to emergency response and kind of what to think about.

For those of us that maybe won't have that time or have, you know, harder times getting out of the building or have children with mobility issues, then we really have to start thinking about, you know, that hiding option. And look, dance studios are challenging. I mean, by design, they've got big windows or big mirrors and they're open and they're, you know, kind of like a gymnasium.

So the challenge here is when you're at your program, kind of look around and see, you know, if I can't get to an exit, is there a place? Is there a door? Is there a locked door that I can get behind? If the door locks, that's great. If the door doesn't lock, that's okay too. But then I want you to start thinking about, you know, what can I do to secure that door? Is there furniture I can barricade it with? Are there chairs I can put in front of it? You know, what can I do to make it difficult to get to me? Because really, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do in this scenario is we're really just trying to buy time, right? We're trying to buy those precious few minutes that it's going to take law enforcement to get to our site and deal with the issue.

So I'm not, you know, suggesting you need a plan for, you know, 45 minutes. You really need to survive this for the first, you know, three to five minutes and that would buy, in most places, law enforcement time to get to you and help out. So those are the strategies, but I know we like permission.

I know we like to have that kind of assurance. So I'll just say now, like, look, everybody, you have permission to survive. We want you to be empowered to take action.

We want you to do the best you can do under these stressful situations and there's no right or wrong answer in most of these. I mean, if you want to hide, that's a great option. If you want to run, that's a great option.

If you don't have any options and your only choice is to fight, then I want you to turn that fear into anger. I want you to let that mama bear come out. I want you to look around and you can do this in advance and start thinking about, you know, heaven forbid, if I had to protect myself, what do I have around me that can be used as an improvised weapon? Maybe it's that fire extinguisher, right? I guarantee you, shoot somebody with a fire extinguisher, that's going to cause some disorientation.

That's going cause some drama. These water bottles seem like they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger every time I look. And there's been so many examples now across the United States, people stopping active shooters with, you know, dice and vacuum cleaners and gosh, basketballs and hockey pucks and just all sorts of weird improvised kind of things that really just catch people off guard and then give you that moment of opportunity to escape or evade the bad person.

So we certainly don't want it to come to that, but it is an important consideration to think about. Like, if you really do have to fight for your life, what do you have around you in your classroom or your dance studio that can be used to help you?

Maia
Got it. Yeah. Thank you so much. I wanted to also interject one thing that I was thinking, which, you know, again, every situation's different, but for me as a dance teacher that's just contracted to do my classes and then go, I wanted to mention for people like me to know what sort of the reporting system should be for those early signs. If something seems a little off, a little weird appearance, acting strange, but it's not something that you need to immediately report.

Do we have some kind of system in place where we're gathering that information and making sure that we're not just holding onto it and being like, well, nothing actually happened. So I don't need to say anything, but where is that going? And how are we making sure that we're keeping tabs on that? And then for studio owners who are hiring and training these teachers, make sure that they feel comfortable reporting maybe weird things to you. Make sure that you have regular check-ins or some open communication with the teacher that they feel like they can come to you if they see any potential warning signs.

Andy
It's a fantastic point. And you're right. Especially if you've got folks that are kind of in and out, not one centralized system or even a chance to all get together and talk.

And sometimes the silos are our worst enemies on these things because the lady at the front desk saw it and the dance teacher saw it and maybe the administrator saw it, but nobody kind of holistically said, oh gosh, I saw all this stuff and putting it together. I will say there's a new law that went into effect last year. Not a lot of people are talking about it.

Not a lot of people seem to know about it. It's for the state of California and it's called the Workplace Violence Protection Program or Senate Bill 553. And it's the only state that's doing this.

But basically if you have 10 or more employees, you are required now under California law to have a workplace violence prevention program, to have this active threat training, to have a whole bunch of documents, to have ways to report these kinds of incidents. You have to keep a log that can be to Cal OSHA. And it is very serious.

It is 28, up to $28,000 in fines per location if you're not compliant with this law. So, you know, a lot of people don't know about it. And you think about how many industries does 10 or more employees get to? I mean, that's gosh, nail salons, ice cream parlors, McDonald's, dance studios, childcare center.

I mean, it's really a broad reaching law. And I'd hate to see anybody get, you know, kind of caught with that $28,000 fine. That's not a great day.

And by the way, the law is, if you have more than one location and one location isn't compliant, then they assume that your other locations aren't compliant and they just start levying the fine. So if you've got 10 different locations, it would be 10 times 28,000, which I don't have to take my shoes off to count that high, but like that's a lot of money. I don't have that much money sitting around, right? So, yeah, so we've been doing a tremendous amount of work in California trying to get programs up to snuff.

And the other interesting thing too, is there's a big push to have this training done in native language. So we've had to translate our active shooter program into, well, it's been in Spanish for years, but you know, like Armenian and Haitian and all these other languages just to meet this new California law. So if you're in California, please SB 553 is the name of the law that passed.

Make sure that you get into compliance with that. Cause I don't want to see you get hit by Kalosha. That wouldn't be fun.

Maia
Yeah. Thank you for that. Do you have time for one more?

Andy
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Maia
This has been so helpful.

Andy
I could talk all night. I love this stuff and I hope it's helpful.

Maia
Oh, a hundred percent.

Andy
Again, I understand there's pressures and not everybody has the time dedicated to think through these issues, but it's certainly something, if you can do a little bit of prevention on the front, it certainly pays dividends to the back.

And I'm not talking about like the active shooter scenario. I'm really talking about, you know, your most basic things, the power outages, the snow days, the hot days, the days when again, the neighborhood street is closed and people can't come to pick up their kids. And then you suddenly see a shift.

I'm not a dance teacher. I'm essentially a caregiver at that point. You know, you think back to Atlanta a few years ago, they had that horrible ice storm.

Parents couldn't get to you, you know? And, and I know, you know, just the creature comforts we keep at the dance studio is look, it's, it's not like a, a childcare program. We're not going to have blankets and food and snacks and all this stuff to sustain. I mean, some of those parents were separated up, you know, over 12 hours from their kids.

And you think about what that looks like. It could be kind of, kind of crazy, right?

Maia
For sure. Yeah. So as a general theme, one of the things that I know you do trainings in is de-escalation. So I think that that can also apply to a number of different scenarios. But I'm thinking particularly, you have a parent that's PO'd about you saying they have to pay their overdue bill, or you have maybe a teen student that's PO'd about something and the situation is escalating.

I'm sure, you know, there's safety concerns and things that I want to touch upon. And then there's also the idea of me as a dance teacher, if I'm the only one in the room, I can't leave my, you know, 10 other students, let's say, to deal with this situation. So, so what do I do?

Andy
It's a tough one.

You know, I was, it's funny you bring that up because I was kind of thinking through that in my head on today as I was driving around town and I, you know, it's, I think the first thing you got to do, and again, I guess this kind of comes down to communication. You got to figure out a way to communicate that there's some distress or you need some assistance. And again, you look to see what other adults are going to happen to be around the building.

Because you can't just leave that whole classroom full of kids. It's not, it's not an option. When you kind of start to think about the actual tools that we have with de-escalation, a lot of it's going to be body language.

A lot of it's going to be tone of voice. I would say a lot of it's even location and spacing. And, you know, if you do have that parent that's continuing to get, you know, more agitated and more agitated and more agitated, if there's an opportunity to remove them from your space and it, you know, you got to be careful how you do it because you don't want to like amp it up and just say, Hey, Mr. Jones, I understand you're really sorry.

I understand you're upset about this. I want to help you with this. Would you mind if we, if we walked over here because, you know, studio one is getting started over there and I just want to be respectful.

I don't want to interrupt them or something like that. And, you know, try to move that problem away from, you know, the kids and the other things that, you know, if you can get them outside, that's even better. I know in, in childcare, we always say like, Hey, you know, they're, they're taking their nap down the hall.

Do you mind if we go outside? Cause they're napping, which yeah, they, maybe they're not even napping. We're just using it as an excuse to get out of there. You know, the other thing I was talking to some, I was just got back.

I was in Japan a few weeks ago and Japan's an interesting culture. You know, they, the whole country of Japan last year, only nine times did a police officer fire their weapon. Can you imagine? And one of those times was like an accidental discharge, you know? So how'd you like to be that guy? You know, so they are, it was interesting, you know, just, you know, working with the folks there and talking to them and kind of learning from them, but they are very much all about, you know, let's deescalate, let's be respectful.

Let's apply as much as we can kind of social norms to things. And one of the things that we were actually talking about is, is, you know, even just a gift of food, you know, if you think about it, like, Hey, I'm, I'm a little hungry. Are you hungry? You want to have a snack with me while we talk through this? And even that little like offering of food, you know, and there's a reason why we used to like break bread.

Right. Cause like you're not, you're not getting into fights when your mouth is full of food or your hands are full of food. Right.

So there's some strategy by that, but you know, and who knows if parents come in, it's maybe after work, maybe their glucose is in the tank and maybe they're hangry, maybe they're just upset. So that little like breaking bread, that offering of bread, that little snack, maybe just enough to kind of get their blood sugar back up and, and have them, you know, be a little bit nicer to you too. So I thought that was kind of funny.

You know, nobody's going to, nobody can punch you if they've, you know, got a candy bar in their hand or something like that.

Maia
It's like the Snickers commercials. You're not you when you're hungry.

Andy
Right. Yeah. A hundred percent.

So it's those types of little things. Again, you know, the, the body posture makes a big difference about, you know, if you're going to stand straight up, you're going to be hunched down even to the point where if, you know, if somebody's coming to the front desk, I don't want somebody towering over me. So, you know, I want to stand up just for my own good reasons.

Right. But I also want to stand up because that again, gets me at eye level with you. So I can look you in the eye.

It also is a sign of respect, like, Oh, you're, you're here. I'm standing up to acknowledge you. But selfishly it's, it's also for self-defense too, you know? So it's kind of those little things.

And certainly, you know, being cognizant of like our arm placement, we're not going to like wrap our arms up and things like that. You know, but going back to the scenario, like if, if you truly are having to deal with this in the middle of a class where you're the only adult and you've got other children that are present, it's a very, it's almost an unwinnable situation there. Maybe depending on the age of the kids, if they're older kids, you know, maybe some of the other kids can kind of be elicited to join you and try to talk their colleague, their classmate, their friend down a little bit.

But certainly that's something I think you should be thinking about it. You're, if you're a teacher, you should be thinking about that in your classroom. We should be thinking about that in your staff meetings, if you all have them and kind of talking through, you know, what is the communication protocol for that? How would I notify somebody? I need some help.

We oftentimes don't like code words and emergency stuff because code words are confusing and people don't know what they mean. But this is one case where I think having a code word is a little bit helpful in these deescalation situations. Because if I pull out my phone and I say, I'm going to call the cops, you know, what are they going to say? Well, go ahead or whatever.

And it's going to escalate the whole situation. Whereas if I can have some kind of a keyword or a phrase or something, I can tell another adult or somebody down the hall, you know, Hey, this is Andy in studio one. I'm just calling into those.

Did those peanut butter cookies arrive for, you know, this afternoon? And, you know, like a lot of places, we probably don't have peanut butter that often because of allergies and stuff. So it might be a little uncommon, but that could be our code word, like peanut butter cookies. And now I'm telling you like, Hey, I'm in trouble, but I can't really say I'm in trouble because I don't want to escalate the situation.

So, you know, that's something to think about too. A little code word you could have with colleagues just kind of like, Hey, pay attention over here. I'm, I've got a situation, but I don't want to make a bigger deal out of it and potentially, you know, escalate it.

So that's something to think about too. But, you know, back to your scenario with the kind of the one person and multiple kids that that's, it's very hard to do. It's very, it's almost unwinnable, isn't it? Yeah.

Best to just try and make sure you're not escalating anything, you know, anything that you can help.

Maia
I know this from working in sales, I feel like, which is a little bit different, but like using your body language and your tone of voice to like keep the customer where you want them, you know, keep the kids where you want to keep the parents where you want to, whatever you need to do to make sure it doesn't get to that point.

Andy
That empathy, right? That repeating it back and not in a bad way, but like, I'm trying to understand you.

I think I hear you saying A, B, and C, is that right? I mean, that can really be a powerful tool to de-escalate situations. And, you know, even just the candor like, Hey, this is really important to me. I want to, I want to work with you on this, but I got this class right now and I got, I got to do this.

Like, could we set up a time? Could we do this? Like, you know, because again, if it's, if you're able to put some time between yourself and the problem, most people, again, will have that opportunity. They'll calm down or they'll go home and think about it. And maybe it won't be such a big deal.

You know, when you see them again, but that might be a strategy as well, especially if you're just a solo teacher and you don't really have any support that you can, you can rely on. Yeah. Perfect.

Maia
Well, I won't make you play this little disaster trivia game anymore. As much as I have enjoyed picking your brain and I know you have a lot more good stuff, but I just want to shift the focus because you've already mentioned that you have so many more resources and you provide training. There's, there's so much more that you do.

So can you talk a little bit about what you do obviously outside the dance world and everything that you offer?

Andy
Yeah. So, I mean, we're, we're basically all about emergencies and preparedness and safety and we work with child serving organizations around the world to keep kids safe and the staff safe too. So as you mentioned, we've got, you know, active shooter training specifically for childcare programs and day camps and dance studios and, you know, really anybody that works with kids YMCA programs, even like swim camps and those types of things.

So we work with a really broad spectrum of folks that again, just work with children and want to have a plan and do this right. I'm really excited. A few months ago, we actually started our own brand of walkie talkies, which has been phenomenal.

You know, after 10 years of like hearing all the complaints about communication, how they're static and how they don't reach and how there's, you know, truck drivers on the channel swearing at us and it's not appropriate for kids and all that. We finally made our own and we launched it a few months ago. So that's over at our website or walkietalkies.us is another website that we have.

But they've got, you know, like five day battery life. They're encrypted. They're secure.

They're private. It's only you on the channel. They're easy to use.

There's not a lot of parts. And the best thing is I can use them. I literally use them around the world.

Like when I'm in Japan, I can use my walkie talkie to talk to my kids back home. That's how I was doing bedtime tucking them in and stuff. So yeah, they're really cool that, you know, they work again nationwide across the United States.

So if you have multiple sites, you're doing field trips, you're, you know, outdoors or just need some coordination, or if you're, you know, you don't have an intercom in your facility and you're trying to figure out, gosh, how do we make announcements? How do we talk about emergencies or how do we do ratios? And, you know, those types of counts, they come in super handy. So they're five ounces. They're super lightweight.

I love them. They're great. Five days of battery life.

And they're only about a hundred bucks. And so they're, they're very cost-effective. You know, you think about even like giving your kid, I'm not going to go out and buy my kid a thousand dollar cell phone and then pay $80 a month for them to have a cell phone.

And then they're going to be on social media and getting bullied and pictures and inappropriate stuff. Like, ah, gosh, I don't want to do it, but I'll, I'll give them a walkie talkie and say, Hey, if you need me, we can talk on this. So that's kind of cool.

We've been having a lot of fun with that as well. Yeah. On the website.

So if you go over to ICP, that's Institute for Childhood Preparedness. So icp.us, or if you want to do the spelling bee, you can go to childhoodpreparedness.org. I found out, you know, after doing this for years, like people can't spell preparedness, right? People couldn't spell my last name. They couldn't spell preparedness.

So I just got icp.us. That's our website, which is funny because now it's brought a whole bunch more like insane clown posse friends and fans over to our website. Totally unintended, but we're there. We, you know, shout out to the juggalos or whatever.

Um, so that's on there. We've got a whole bunch of great free stuff. We've got, you know, preventing deaths on hot cars.

We've got car seat installation videos. We've got food allergy. We've got a pediatric burns with the, with the children's burn foundation courses.

Um, we've got interviews with people that have survived real emergencies and Lacey Newman who survived to get shot and then survived the Las Vegas shooting a few years ago. So we've got a whole bunch of great free stuff on there. I'd encourage you to take a look.

We've got downloadables, infographics, stuff for your newsletter, all that kind of great stuff. So always trying to get the word out and just, you know, keep everybody as safe as we can. We have on-demand classes.

Uh, and then we also travel the country, come to your building, do site assessments, work on your plans with you, train your staff. There's nothing more powerful than actually being in your space. You can watch an on-demand video, but like when something like an expert is actually in your space talking about your plan and specifically what to do in your classroom and your studio and your office, whatever.

Uh, I just can't tell you how empowering that is for folks. Like it, it's really, it's cool to see. Uh, and we've been very fortunate to get to do it, you know, for gosh, hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world at this point.

So, yeah, so that's a, that's cool. I got an early childhood chats podcast. If you like early childhood stuff, that's out there too.

And that's, again, we try to put as much free stuff as we can out there because at the end of the day, we're just trying to keep kids safe and do the right thing here.

Maia
I am so blown away by everything that you do and very, very lucky that you joined me on my podcast. Thank you again so much.

Andy
Yeah, I just really appreciate it. And I think it's going to be so great.

Maia
I just keep thinking about, uh, like it sounds corny, but like knowledge is power.

That's the quote that kind of keeps coming to my mind that just hearing this and having it at the top of mind and having the basic knowledge can start so much more power and success for dance studios and dance teachers to be prepared for these things. So I really appreciate it.

Andy
I love the quote. I was thinking about...

Maia
You know, where I'm going with this. I hope I didn't steal it.

Andy
No, no, no.

I, well, obviously I, our trademarked one is, you know, don't be scared, be prepared. So that's our, our copyrighted trademarked one. But then the other one, which I think is really important is like, you know, you, you don't rise to the occasion. Really what happens is you fall to your level of training, right? So, I mean, again, if your plan is to like, I don't know how to use that fire extinguisher, but when the building's on fire, I'm going to figure it out. Like, that's not a great plan, right? We're going to fall to that level of training. Uh, and we do that purposely by the way.

Cause you know, when scary situations happen, our brain dumps all sorts of crazy chemicals into our body and that whole fight and flee and fight and all that, um, you know, kind of kicks in, right? So you're not going to be at your best. You're not going to be thinking straight. You're not going to be really, um, you know, prepared to, to launch a full detailed plan on what to do, uh, because your body's going to be working against you from a chemical standpoint at that point.

So it really is about, you know, that level of training and what you're comfortable with and what you're familiar with. And it's a big deal, especially when we think about the young kids, because if you are calm and cool and collected, all the kids that are, you know, they're in your program, they're looking up to you. They're already looking up to you anyway, by the way, is, is the teacher in the room.

Uh, but they're also going to be looking up to you in a big way during emergencies. So if you are calm, cool and collected and decisive and know what to do and have a plan, your classroom, your studio, your program is going to go so much better. And rightfully so that if you're scared, got anxiety or anxious or crying, all this stuff, which is again, all totally appropriate in these scary situations.

But you know, in some of this, you kind of got to fake it till you make it. You got to draw that inner strength out and really try to put on a good, um, a good showing for the kids. Uh, even if you're, you know, scared to death inside and believe me as a paramedic, I was certainly in that situation many, many times in my career.

You know, after three years of paramedic school, you still aren't prepared for every nine on one call you get. And there was many times when I had to fake it till I made it because if I was freaking out as the professional in the room, those patients would have went into shock and had, you know, really bad outcomes. So you know, when the game comes, you put your game face on, you do the best you can, but it really does help to have a plan and have practice and have training and have thought about these issues in advance.

It really does make the difference between life and death and in many cases. So I'm so glad we could have the conversation today and I appreciate everything that you guys are doing and I really love the dance community and happy to help out in any way I can. So please, if you need any help, you know, icp.us, my email is andy at icp.us. Happy to chat with you and figure out something we can do to make your program safe.

Maia
Friends, once again, it's such an honor to have Andy on the show today. I hope you listen through the whole thing. I know it's long.

I feel like this could be a sort of intro training. If you don't already have policies in place, listen to the episode, share it with your teachers, and then maybe you could get together and start to implement little by little, more and more policies to help protect your students and the families, teachers and anyone that comes into your studio space. With that, I'm going to keep my little end cap short because I'm sure you have a lot to digest here and a lot of work to do potentially to help get in line with some of these suggestions.

So I just want to say thank you to GB mystical as always for the theme music that I use for the show. I also would love to continue this conversation and hear what sorts of rules and tools you've already implemented in your own studio spaces to help protect from some of these situations we discussed. So be sure to join the casual dance teachers network on Facebook to chat with us there and follow the casual dance teachers podcast on Instagram.

I'll see you on the next one, guys. Thank you so much. Bye bye.