Creating Healthy, Safe and Supportive Learning Environments
Ms Marlene
What does it mean for learning environments to be healthy, safe and supportive?
Our aim as educators is to create learning environments that are healthy, safe, and supportive. In order to successfully do this, we must consider the importance of taking a holistic and integrated approach to our teaching. Such an approach should carefully incorporate elements of personal development into the learning process, such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, decision making, and relationship skills. When educators include these elements in their classrooms, they are actively contributing to a healthy, safe, and supportive learning environment.
It is clear that educators are responsible for creating a learning environment that promotes and supports child and student well-being.
This responsibility includes the need to focus not just on academic success, but also on our students’ cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development.
The following illustration represents strategies and activities that educators can use in order to help contribute to a positive school climate, which is key to a healthy school (Ministry of Education; Foundations for a Healthy School). It is crucial for educators to find meaningful ways of incorporating these various elements into their teaching practice in order to help create a healthy, safe, and supportive learning environment.
Curriculum, teaching and learning is an area that offers a wide range of opportunities for students to learn, practise and promote positive and healthy behaviours, and to practise how to lead healthy, active lives.
School and classroom leadership focuses on creating a positive classroom and school environment by identifying shared goals and priorities that are responsive to the needs of the school community
Student engagement refers to the extent to which students identify with and value their learning; feel a sense of belonging at school; and are informed about, engaged with and empowered to participate in and lead academic and non-academic activities.
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Healthy, safe and caring social and physical environments support learning and contribute to the positive cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development of students.
Home, school and community partnerships engage parents,* extended family, school staff, child care and family support programs and community groups in a mutually beneficial way to support, enhance and promote opportunities for learning and well-being.
(Foundations for a Healthy School
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/healthyschools/resourceF4HS.pdf ).
How can we be authentic teachers and learners in the classroom?
One of the best ways to be an authentic teacher and to incorporate authentic learning into our classrooms is through Restorative Practice.
Restorative Practice is “a social science that studies how to build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision-making” (Wachtel, 2013).
Restorative Practices are a framework for building community and for responding to challenging behaviour through authentic dialogue, coming to understanding, and making things right (Amos Clifford, Center for Restorative Process).
The benefits of Restorative Practice are Improved relationships, behaviour, and environment. This environment leads to enhanced academic performance.
One excellent Restorative Practice technique is Classroom Circles. Classroom circles support the two main goals of restorative practices: building community and responding to harms through dialogue that sets things right.
Within the classroom circles, participants are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas in order to allow students to learn to value and regularly use pro-active, positive ways to build and maintain a peaceful classroom community. Classroom circles will also develop and enhance positive and supportive connections with peers. This practice creates an emotionally, psychologically, and physically safe for students to share concerns about conflicts, issues, and behaviours that are affecting them (Amos Clifford, Center for Restorative Process).
What skills do we need to develop in order to be effective restorative educators?
Restorative Approaches are based on 5 key themes or ideas (Belinda Hopkins, Restorative Classroom Practice). In order to be effective restorative educators is in crucial for us to embrace these themes and incorporate them into our teaching practice surrounding Restorative Practices.
Theme 1 – Unique and equally valued perspectives Everyone has their own unique perspective on a situation or an event and needs an opportunity to express this in order to feel respected, valued and listened to.
Theme 2 – Thoughts influence emotions, and emotions influence subsequent actions What people think at any given moment influences how they feel at that moment, and these feelings inform how they behave. The thoughts and feelings are ‘beneath the surface’ and yet are very important to understand.
Theme 3 - Empathy and consideration for others When there are conflicts or disagreements harm can result – in terms of negative emotions such as anger, hurt, fear, frustration and confusion and in terms of damaged relationships and connections between people. To live in harmony together people need empathy and consideration so they understand who is affected by their choice of action in any given situation and how.
Theme 4 – Identifying needs comes before identifying strategies to meet these needs Whether someone has caused harm or been on the receiving end of harm they are likely to have similar needs. Until these needs are met the harm may not be repaired and relationships can remain damaged. Unmet needs can be the underlying cause for harmful behaviour in the first place and these need exploring as well to help people break the cycle of inappropriate behaviour. Identifying what people need precedes identifying strategies to meet these needs. Understanding what we all need to give of our best is also the first step to identifying agreed codes of conduct for everyone in a school community.
Theme 5 – Collective responsibility for the choices made and for their outcomes It is the people affected by a situation or event who are best placed to identify what should happen so that everyone can move on, and so that the harm can be repaired. This ‘ownership’ of decision-making and problem-solving demonstrates respect and trust, develops pro-social skills and confidence and strengthens connections.
(Belinda Hopkins, Restorative Classroom Practice)
In addition to embracing these themes, effective Restorative Practice educators should practice active listening and model this practice for their students.
Active listening can be summarized with the acronym ‘RASA’, meaning to first receive the message by carefully listening, then to appreciate the message by relaying what underlining messages were expressed, then to summarize the ideas, and lastly to ask follow-up questions.
Throughout this process, educators should be careful to apply empathetic listening.
Brene Brown provides an excellent description of empathetic listening that can be found at this link:
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What is “progressive discipline”?
The term “progressive discipline” refers to “a whole-school approach that utilizes a continuum of prevention programs, interventions, supports, and consequences to address inappropriate student behaviour and to build upon strategies that promote and foster positive behaviours.” Specifically, this means that “When inappropriate behaviour occurs, disciplinary measures should be applied within a framework that shifts the focus from one that is solely punitive to one that is both corrective and supportive. Schools should utilize a range of interventions, supports, and consequences that are developmentally appropriate and include learning opportunities for reinforcing positive behaviour while helping students to make good choices” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 3).
This social discipline window show where restorative practices are found on the control/support axes. Here, we can see that discipline should have high levels of both control (setting limits) and support (nurturing).
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(Costello, Restorative Practices Handbook).
While engaging in restorative practices, progressive discipline means changing the question from “How do we discipline students for
‘bad’ behaviours?” to “How do we create a classroom environment that supports and encourages pro-social behaviours?”.
The Ontario Ministry of Education offers an excellent resource for educators wanting to implement progressive discipline into their teaching practice titled “Caring and Safe Schools in Ontario: Supporting Students with Special Education Needs Through Progressive Discipline”.
This resource is available at the following link:
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/elemsec/speced/Caring_Safe_School.pdf
Here are some excellent questions to apply when exercising restorative practice. These questions are designed to help students think critically about their behaviour, its effects on others, and how they can solve problems that they are facing.
What does current research reveal about the mental health and well-being of Ontario students?
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In order to best address the needs of learners in the classroom, it is a good idea for educators to familiarize themselves with statistics surrounding mental health in Ontario classrooms.
Egale Canada; Human Rights Trust provides some very important statistics to consider for educators wanting to better understand how the mental health of LGBTQI2S students may be affected and the ways in which we can best support these students.
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It is very helpful for educators to continually familiarize themselves with relevant statistics that affect members of their school community.
Educators can further help to support students by incorporating LGBTQI2S resources into their teaching practice. One very helpful resource is the “Genderbread Person” which illustrates the differences in concepts of sex, gender, attraction, and identity.
