Fostering healthy school environment is critical for overall development

The initial days, weeks, and months of the school year are the best times to begin creating a healthy environment in schools, but it's never too late to get started. In order to foster a positive, fruitful, and healthy environment for students, teachers, educators, and even parents can employ positive action tactics.

Students are more likely to become motivated when educators provide a healthy environment, which results in excellent learning outcomes. (File Photo)

Students’ academic, emotional, and social performance in school depends on supportive, effective learning, and healthy environments. A supportive and healthy environment for children is made up of myriads of elements such as a safe environment, encouraging risk-taking, open and honest communication. Furthermore, the development of trust and respect, as well as positive interaction should also be provided.

The initial days, weeks, and months of the school year are the best times to begin creating a healthy environment in schools, but it’s never too late to get started. In order to foster a positive, fruitful, and healthy environment for students, teachers, educators, and even parents can employ positive action tactics. By putting the below-mentioned techniques into practice, teachers can enable the balance that is required for a healthy environment that supports better academic performance with the capacity to advance aspirants’ social and emotional development both within and outside the school.

Maninder Singh Bajwa, CEO and founder of iScuela explains how a healthy environment can be created and maintained for overall development of the students.

Celebrate Success

Celebrate the students’ accomplishments to create a good and productive learning atmosphere in addition to feedback and appreciation. This can take the form of an award or a shout-out. A sense of success is generated, and constructive learning habits are encouraged when teachers acknowledge and discuss students’ accomplishments with other students, which leads to a healthy environment.

Focus on the Positive

Just like adults, students, growing up, acquire both good and bad qualities. That’s exactly why the onus is on teachers and educators to harness the positives and help the students in channeling them for something more constructive. Every day, a positive quality in every student should be identified and emphasized. The teachers may establish and sustain a healthy environment for the students by concentrating on the positive aspects of every student. Furthermore, they can support each student in developing long-lasting self-worth and self-esteem.

Safety

A good learning environment provides students with a secure platform. Learners must first feel safe both mentally and physically if the educators want them to succeed academically. While most educational institutions take physical safety precautions, few learning environments consider the students’ mental health. Safety in a classroom extends beyond physical health. Learners must experience support, acceptance, and respect in order to sustain a safe and healthy environment.

Classroom Rules and Expectations

Students will feel safer and more at ease if they know a healthy classroom. Everyone knows what is expected and how the rest of the community will behave, since the expectations and regulations are clearly stated. Thus, this promotes an atmosphere of predictability and trust for all. Moreover, students are more likely to buy in when they are involved in setting the expectations for the class because they recognize their contribution to the community’s growth.

Student Choice

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The choice of a tool, the method of information presentation, or even the subject being studied can be picked by the students. For instance, scholars can select any character from history, media, or a book and discuss them. This will create a sense of valuing student choices by the teacher, and they can share the control over a healthy environment all together.

Encouraging Failure

Making progress involves making mistakes, no matter what you are trying to do. Therefore, it’s crucial to embrace failure and reframe it as learning, which is an integral element of a healthy environment in a school. When students experience failure and grow from it, they gain resilience and are able to allow themselves the flexibility to push themselves further. If students live a safe life, they will miss out on more opportunities, new friendships, and experiences than if they don’t fear failure.

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