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.

Watch Now: PHQP_0018 More Hazard Mitigation

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 related to the weather was to leave in the afternoon when the sun is kind of starting to go down.

Walk all night and then be home before it got really, really sunny and hot during the day. And that was a way to keep me from getting sunburnt and to keep me from overheating. So that’s why the when was important.

Also, I figured if I put it off too long, I was going to decide not to do it, which can be valuable when you’re considering when to do your scary things. I always had to figure out my route. Now there’s lots of ways I could have walked.

I could have just kind of wandered around neighborhoods and up roads and back down and stuff and had to plan that way. But happened to be along the coast. And so I was able to chart a route where I pretty much walked down a road to the beach road and then along the beach for 25 miles and turned around and came back.

And so it was a real simple route. Since I was going to be out at night, it was a well lit route for most of the journey. Lots of civilization.

I wasn’t going to be out in any remote areas. I think there were seven Waffle Houses along my route. So I was in good shape there.

You know, gas stations, those kind of things. So I don’t think doing a night walk like I did out in a very remote area would have been a good idea. But this route worked out along those lines for me.

Next was food and water. How many calories do I need to consume while I’m doing this? How much water do I need to drink? And I figured those things out and I ordered myself some gear. I got myself a hundred ounce camelback for my backpack.

And I figured out the logistics of when I would fill that up because I calculated I was going to need to go through about 300 ounces of water. Probably would have been better with 400. But that’s one of those things you learn.

Food. I knew it was going to burn lots and lots of calories and so I had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. By the way, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made with whole wheat bread that I made myself.

So that was delightful. Also, I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of a plastic bag. I don’t think it’s something I’d done since eating a sack lunch at school or when we were on family road trips or things like that.

But anyway, delightful. The peanut butter and the jelly soaked into the bread and they were very yummy. Anyway, so I got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas and trail mix and beef jerky and nuts and those kind of things.

And so I’m fueling myself plenty of carbs and protein to keep me going. And so that took care of that. Because heading out on an adventure like this without any food and water would have been a dumb idea.

It would have made it much more dangerous. So again, this is hazard mitigation. I had to consider my pain and suffering.

And so I did a lot of thinking about this. I packed ibuprofen because I figured after a while, the joints start getting swelled and things. And so maybe that’s going to help keep the pain away.

So that was helpful. After about 15 miles, I started taking one of those every, I remember it was four or six hours, whatever the dosing was. That kind of cut down on the inflammation.

I knew from past experience that from past 20 and 30 mile walks, that my knees start getting a little bit achy at those distances. And so I wore knee sleeves the whole time and that kept my knees in good working order the whole time. I had good fancy socks on and made sure that I was wearing shoes that were broken in but not worn out to try to prevent some of the blistering and stuff.

Again, my feet turned into hamburger. I’m still at a point where I might lose a toenail. I don’t know.

I probably won’t give you any updates on that because that’s gross. But all that was done as part of the hazard mitigation thing. It made me more likely to be successful if my knees are going to stay in working order and I’m not going to be too sore.

And it also mitigated the risk of long-term or major injuries. And so I considered the pain and suffering I was going to be putting myself through. And then the gear, again, I mentioned the camel pack I had to add.

I added some fancy socks I ordered, the shoes. I spent a lot of time figuring out what shorts and what t-shirt I was going to wear. I should have worn a different shirt.

I wasn’t happy with that. But once I was on the road, I was stuck with it. So I’ll assess that next time.

Things like I had to make sure I had my chargers for my Apple Watch and my phone and all the right cables and all that kind of stuff. So I spent a lot of time thinking and packing all that kind of stuff to make sure that the adventure, the scary thing, was going to be successful. And then I did some planning for the unexpected.

One thing about the unexpected is you don’t expect it. But I tried to anticipate things that could go wrong that I’d have to deal with. So what am I going to deal with if, I don’t know, some hoodlums decide they’re going to mug me in the dark next to a casino at 3 o’clock in the morning? What happens if I twist an ankle? Those kind of things.

And so I anticipated some of those kind of things that, I guess, the expected, unexpected. The unexpected things I could guess about and had strategies for dealing with those to prepare me for the adventure as well. And it all came together and was mostly successful.

Again, beat myself up foot-wise a lot more than I thought I was going to. Knees and hips and joints and everything bounced back pretty well for a 56-year-old guy if you’re really good about it. And again, all of that goes to the planning I did.

And so if you break down scary things you’re considering doing for yourself or risks you’re considering letting the kids take in your programs, kind of like I did for this adventure, and mitigate hazards in those different categories, you can take things that you might have been really, really worried about doing yourself or allowing kids to do and get a lot more comfortable with them. Rough and tumble play is one that comes up a lot. If you designate an area and you designate an area where you’ve got a resilient surface and you don’t have any sharp edges kids are going to bump into, and you’ve got a strategy for helping kids make up their own rules, and you talk about things like consent so that only kids who want to be rough and tumble playing are rough and tumble playing, and you talk about watching each other’s faces and listening to people when people say no or stop, and those kind of things, you can do a lot to make the big scary thing of rough and tumble play a lot less scary for you as the adult and make it a safe, hazard-mitigated risk for little kids to take.

It doesn’t take a lot to do those hazard mitigation steps. It’s basically sitting down and thinking and doing a little bit of research and talking through things with what Vygotsky would call your more knowledgeable other. Maybe it’s an AI companion.

Maybe it’s another person who’s got some experience in doing that kind of thing. Maybe it’s your cat. I don’t know.

Talking through those things and coming up with some strategies for keeping things as safe as you can make them. So I think that’s it. Wrapping up, plan a scary thing for yourself or for your classroom.

Help make risk-taking a little bit easier because that’s really what doing the scary thing is all about. It’s about supporting risk-taking, and again, four types of risk-taking. Social risks, emotional risks, physical risks, and cognitive risks.

And all of those things, as we talked about in a previous episode, lead to learning. And that’s why we want to support them. So Amazon idea for this month.

I looked this up. Somebody just purchased these using my Amazon link. And again, the Amazon link is just a portal you can use to shop the Amazon website.

It gives me a small kickback for everything that gets spent via that link. Somebody got thumb screws. And so thumb screws are these little guys.

You can see they got that little gnarled edge on them. And instead of using a screwdriver to screw them in, you can just use your thumbs. And with so many thumb screws, somebody’s got a project going on.

I’m really interested in knowing what it is. And so if you are a listener to this show who ordered those thumb screws, please message me and tell me what you’re up to. And thanks for ordering them because that helps support the podcast and the website.

It’s much appreciated, as is sharing stuff. If you like the show, if you like the podcast, share it. It helps us grow and it is much appreciated.

Next week, what are we going to get into next week? We’re going to get into programming consistency. And just a little tease. This is the idea.

This is a big thing I hear about. You know, things are done one way in the two-year-old room and another way in the infant room and a third way in the preschool room. And there’s not a whole lot of consistency throughout a program.

That can be really, really tough for staff, even for small programs. So we’re going to talk about ways to strategize to keep things more consistent in your early learning settings. Dad joke of the week.

Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up by itself? Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up by itself? It was too tired. Too tired. This has been the Playvolution HQ podcast.

Thanks for listening. Back soon. Bye-bye.

This has been an Explorations Early Learning Upstairs Studio production. Get it, Jeeves? Too tired?

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