Creating a Comfortable and Safe Learning Environment

For some students, school is not a very fun or safe experience.

There are many different sources of stress that students have to deal with very early in their school years. Some sources of stress for students include grades, peer pressure, bullying, acceptance, separation and fear. Children are unique individuals and so are their own personal sources of stress. Finding ways to deal with and help the students usually falls on the classroom teacher. As a teacher, I found that dealing with and helping students often worked hand in hand. While dealing with them as they were reacting to their stress, I found if I could help them understand why they were feeling that way, they were better able to overcome it. The best way to get to the source of the stress was talking about it with the students. Relating personal situations about similar stress may give the student some comfort and encourage him/her to talk about the problem or situation. Teacher initiated group work with peers can be a way to present the problem and open it for discussion. Class meetings are a very helpful way to talk about problems that occur in school. During the class meeting, a scenario can be presented and the class discusses how to handle it and comes up with a possible solution. The scenarios can be planned by the teacher from situations that occurred in or out of school. As the students become comfortable with the class meetings, they often propose a scenario that they would like to discuss with their peers. As a teacher, my goal was to be the “guide on the side” and observe the meeting.