So based off of this title you probably think this is going to be a pretty boring blog post. Well, I thought a similar thing when we started learning about this in the first place. However, I can 100% guarantee that it was worh it. Not only was it super important for my classmates and I to learn this information, it wasn’t boring either. We watched many videos, some of which were more exciting than others, and got to make whatever we wanted at the end. Well, not anything we wanted, it still had to be about workplace safety, but as long as our artifact showed our leaning it could be whatever. So I teamed up with Jordyn, Kyle, and Jackson to make our video on staying safe at the job for a young worker. Now keep in mind we wanted to show our learning but still have a lot fo fun with this, so it’s probably not the straight forward safety video you’re used to.

So yeah, I think you know what I meant by not the most straight forward safety video. While we did show examples of issues and ways to fix them we certainly did not go into detail, but that is why this blog post exists. It also partly exists because it’s a graded assignment. Anyways I would now like to write about some key things I learned that I will make sure to keep with me in my future careers, and what we learned about/watched that led me to these ideas.

In the beginning of this mini unit, we did a small quiz where we were asked questions about any work experience we’d had in the past and how safe they were. At the end of this we came to the conclusion that most were unsafe at our jobs because, surprise, we weren’t given the correct training. As young workers/new workers we are supposed to get an orientation, training, and supervision, however many of us didn’t get that at our jobs. The job I spoke about was working as a baseball umpire. I had born given an orientation and training, however I was rarely supervised and I didn’t know about all my working rights. Needless to say I enjoy my job and I don’t feel unsafe when I work there but now I have learned some things that I could either talk to my employer about or take with me in the future. The next class we were then all horrified after watching a video called Lost Youth. This was a documentary about four young workers who got horrible injuries at their job from lack of training, supervision, and there unsafe factors. Since I am prone to fainting I had my head down for most of the video and just heard what was happening but if you are willing to see some pretty disturbing things, this video tells some really terrible stories that show the dangers of working.

So if you watched the video you’re probably wondering why any teacher would show that to grade 9s, but it’s important to scare us otherwise we went take these issues seriously. To lighten the spirits however we watched some videos that showed us the perfect examples of how we should be working and how we should be trained. I chose to watch the video about Playland since my brother worked there last summer and I intend to next summer.

So yeah we watched a lot of videos but we also got some document that gave us very straight forward hazards that we should avoid and some ways to fix them, these are what my group focused on in our video.

I would have to say my biggest take way from this unit is knowing that my rights are as a young worker. I have the right to refuse to do something if I feel unsafe, I have the right to proper training, and many other things. If I wouldn’t have known these who knows what sort of issues I could’ve gotten into. I will make sure in the future to be aware of these and speak up if I’m ever in a scenario where I do feel unsafe. And as for my job right now, I am going to continue doing it as per usual. However, I would like to maybe speak with my employer about how he could maybe go over a few of these safety rights in the orientation. I also want to spread this knowledge I now have with my co-workers. I say co-workers but I just mean other umpires and let them know what their rights are if any of them don’t feel safe at their job.

I hope maybe you learned something in this blog post, or maybe I just scarred you with eh lost youth video, either way safety in the workplace is something serious that everyone should know. Whether that means making a fun video about it like I did, or just having a simple understanding of what you can and can’t do at work.