Creating physically and emotionally safe environments for student and adults enhances the learning process

The Importance of Safe Learning Environments: Enhancing Student Learning and Well-Being

For students to excel academically in school they must be healthy, engaged, and have a sense of feeling safe in the school environment and community. If students do not feel safe, they will be distracted and unable to focus on their schoolwork or connect and engage with other students. This may lead to them wanting to avoid school altogether and drop out without graduating.

Building a Culture of Safety: The Key to Academic Success and Engagement

A lack of physical and psychological safety can lead to anxiety and fear, which in turn reduces cognitive ability, affecting their level of learning. Students can become withdrawn and lose interest in learning and refrain from engaging in classroom activities and interacting with others if they do not feel safe.

Fostering Emotional Safety: Creating a Supportive Environment for Student Growth

For students to learn effectively, they need to be able to make connections between what they are being taught in school and their own personal cultures and life experiences. They need a safe space to explore this, and for their personal identities to be accepted. This is especially true for children living in challenging home environments.

The Role of Physical Safety in Academic Achievement: Promoting a Secure Learning Environment

It is important for students to feel safe in school and have their own individual strengths, interests, and needs valued and responded to by qualified adults. Creating a safe learning environment means looking for productive learning opportunities for child development based on their individual traits, which can only be done by supportive teachers.

Nurturing Diversity and Inclusion: Empowering Students through Safe Spaces

Appreciating neurodiversity is also a part of creating a safe learning space. Creating different areas for lower or different types of stimulation, for a "quiet time," can give students a break from the busy and hectic classroom. This gives students the opportunity to manage anxiety and calm down if angry or stressed. The creative arts have been proven to help manage stress relief and improve happiness and well-being.

Supporting Neurodiversity in Education: Creating Safe Learning Environments for All Students

As art is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the creative arts create a safe space for exploring self-expression without judgment. Students can feel free, temporarily alleviated from the academic pressure to fulfill their creative desires. Art can also open up safe spaces for discussion and interaction between students, especially around diversity in culture and life experiences where it can help to create understanding and highlight common ground between individuals.

Cultivating Confidence and Self-Expression: The Benefits of Safe Spaces in Student Development

Creating safe spaces in schools allows students to develop self-confidence in speaking out and sharing their ideas and opinions, as well as their values and beliefs without the fear of being ridiculed or receiving negative feedback from other adults or children. It also gives adults more control to manage discussing sensitive subjects without fear of causing offense to create more collaborative working models.

Final Thoughts

By prioritizing physical and emotional safety in educational settings, we can provide students with the necessary foundation to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Creating safe environments promotes engagement, fosters inclusivity, and empowers students to reach their full potential. Let's explore the ways we can enhance learning through safe spaces and support the whole child in their educational journey.

I’m Amanda, and I align standards and integrate content to help teachers meet the needs of the Whole Child in art class! I have yet to find a standard that I couldn’t teach through art, and I want to share it all with you.

Not sure where to start with bringing art and content together? This freebie guide is packed with 25 ideas to align your art lessons with math and ELA standards. Your students will be crafting art and practicing algebraic thinking. Win-win!

I want all students to feel successful in the art room, so I created a standards-based Daffodil Collage lesson to do just that! The lesson includes an artist study, student reflection, and more, so push your artists to their full potential.

Follow along on my Instagram page for more tips on teaching the Whole Child in the art room!

Connecting art and content together doesn’t have to be mind-boggling. I’ve made it simple with 25 math and ELA art lesson starters - for free! Plus, I included 15 worksheets for students to reflect on their art-making journey.