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One of the scariest parts of teaching chemistry isn’t balancing equations or explaining thermodynamics. It’s handing a Bunsen burner to a room full of fifteen year olds for the first time. Every chemistry teacher knows that labs are where some of the best learning happens, but they’re also where students can get hurt if safety isn’t taken seriously. The good news? Lab safety isn’t about making students afraid of the laboratory. It’s about helping them respect it.
Get a Lab Safety Contract
Before students ever complete their first experiment, they should understand the expectations for working safely in your classroom. I always recommend using your district’s approved lab safety contract (or one provided by your science department or chemical hygiene officer) rather than creating one from scratch. If your school isn’t going to supply one for you, I think the one from Flinn Scientific is a pretty good one.
A safety contract does more than check a box. It communicates to students and their parents/guardians that the science lab is a unique learning environment with responsibilities that don’t exist in every classroom.
Teach the Equipment Before the Experiments
Students can’t safely follow lab directions if they don’t know the difference between a beaker and an Erlenmeyer flask. Before my first real lab, we spend time learning the names and purposes of common laboratory equipment. This makes future lab procedures easier to follow and reduces mistakes that could become safety hazards.
Just as importantly, students learn where every piece of safety equipment is located in our classroom:
- Fire extinguisher
- Fire blanket
- Emergency shower
- Eyewash station
- Fume hood
- Sinks (yes this can put out a singed sleeve before rushing to the emergency shower!)
Knowing the equipment is only half the battle. Students also need to know when each piece of equipment is the right choice.
If you need a refresher activity for your students, check out this free word search that tests them on some common chemistry lab equipment.
Every Lab Has Different Risks
Lab safety isn’t a script that students memorize one time at the beginning of the school year. Each new lab investigation brings different hazards. Before every lab, I review the specific risks associated with that activity, and do a dry run of the procedure. This lets me remind them how to use equipment properly and without fear. Students should understand not only what the rules are, but why those rules exist.
One of the best safety investments I ever made was dedicating an entire class period to learning how to use a Bunsen burner. We didn’t rush into an experiment. Students practiced identifying the parts of the burner, inspecting the equipment, positioning the striker correctly, and lighting the flame one at a time while I coached each student individually. That practice paid off for the rest of the year. When students eventually needed a Bunsen burner during an experiment, they weren’t trying to learn chemistry and basic lab skills at the same time. Click here to read more about my Bunsen burner training lab.
Teach Students to Think Through Emergencies
Instead of simply listing safety rules, walk students through realistic scenarios. Ask questions like:
- What would you do if your sleeve caught fire?
- When would you use the fire blanket instead of the safety shower?
- Why might the nearest sink be the fastest solution in one part of the room?
These conversations help students understand that safety isn’t about memorizing procedures. It’s about making good decisions under pressure. I also share real lab accidents and discuss what could have prevented them. The goal isn’t to scare students. It’s to show that most accidents happen when someone ignores procedures or stops paying attention. Most of them are entirely preventable, and others can be made into much smaller problems with quick thinking and action.
My Students Think the Emergency Shower is Always the Answer
One misconception I see every year is that students assume the emergency shower is always the right answer in a lab emergency. It’s understandable. The giant yellow handle is hard to ignore, and for many students it’s the only piece of safety equipment they’ve ever noticed because it certainly stands out in the room.
That’s why I don’t just point out where the safety shower is. We talk through real scenarios. For example, if a student accidentally catches a sleeve on fire while standing next to a sink, running across the room to the emergency shower may actually make the situation worse by giving the fire more time to spread. In that case, getting under the sink immediately or stopping, dropping, and rolling may be the safer choice while classmates grab the fire blanket and I grab the fire extinguisher.
The lesson isn’t that the emergency shower is unimportant. The lesson is that emergency response depends on the situation and the layout of your classroom. Students need to learn to think through emergencies, not simply memorize the location of the safety shower.
Hold Students Accountable
Safety rules only matter if they’re consistently enforced. If a student refuses to wear goggles, ignores directions, or behaves carelessly around chemicals or flames, they don’t participate in the lab. I make a point to KICK THEM OUT. And that’s for everyone’s safety. Let me make myself perfectly clear here. Unsafe behavior doesn’t only endanger the student making poor choices. It puts everyone else in the room at risk. Lab participation is a privilege that comes with responsibility.
Build Trust Before You Build Confidence
By the middle of the school year, I trust my students with equipment that would have terrified them on the first day. That trust isn’t automatic. It’s built through repeated practice, clear expectations, consistent routines, and a classroom culture where safety and accuracy always comes before speed.
Ironically, spending more time teaching safety at the beginning of the year actually makes labs more enjoyable later on. Students get the sense that they can trust themselves when you trust them with this “heavy machinery.” They feel confident because they know what they’re doing. And I can focus on teaching chemistry instead of worrying whether someone is about to make a preventable mistake.
It takes a lot to trust a group of 15 year olds with a Bunsen burner. It takes a lot because 15 year olds on the whole don’t always make the best decisions. Not only that, they don’t always know what the best decision is because they’re just baby chemists. They’re just starting out.
If you need a lab safety activity for your classroom in the first week of school that helps to review lab safety rules before your students know enough chemistry to really get the lab practice, try my mystery activity. Your students answer general lab safety questions and uncover which of the “Mystery Kids” left a chemical puddle on the floor of the chem lab. You can have your students role play the Mystery Kids and really make it even more fun.
Failsafes
I like to keep a few cheapy dollar store hair ties in my classroom for students with long hair. I also have some bobby pins. In a pinch, I’ll let my students go down to the locker room if they have sneakers or a cotton tee shirt in their gym locker that would be more lab appropriate than what they are wearing on lab day. I try not to make a habit of that because it eats up a lot of time, and the gym teachers usually don’t love that. A few classic lab coats can usually take care of most fashion “mishaps” when it comes to the lab.
Final Thoughts
The chemistry lab should be one of the most exciting places in your school, not one of the most stressful. When students understand the purpose behind your safety rules, practice procedures before they need them, and learn to respect the laboratory, they’re free to focus on what really matters: exploring chemistry through hands on investigation. A strong culture of safety isn’t built in a single lesson. It’s built one lab at a time, and practiced all year long.
If you are looking for lab activities for your chemistry classroom, I offer a lab book with over 40 lab activities for high school chemistry students. The labs are pretty simple, most would be considered “green chemistry,” and very few have serious safety or disposal concerns. I wrote most of the labs before I even had a lab room to work with, and kept most of them when I got the lab because I felt they taught everything my students needed. Check it out here.
