Creating a Safe Environment for Teaching

To decrease stress for students

• Set clear classroom rules with predetermined consequences.
• Keep students' sensitive information, such as grades and personal issues, confidential.
• Speak respectfully to students, address them by name, get to know them as individuals, and make each person feel special.
• Use rubrics for assignments so students know the exact expectations for earning specific grades.
• Smile, have fun teaching, and show a sense of humor.

To increase stress for students

• Delegate punishments according to your mood at the time.
• Post grades or assignment scores in the classroom for motivation; embarrass them into achieving.
• Point at students you wish to call on and always let them know who is boss by the tone of your voice.
• Give pop quizzes to catch students who have not been studying.
• Yell at the students to keep them in line and never, ever smile.

Creating a friendly environment:

• Act respectfully toward students at all times.
• Learn students' names by the end of the first day of school.
• Personalize each student's desk or locker with a nametag.
• Smile a lot!
• Greet the students daily outside the classroom door.
• Share appropriate, amusing anecdotes about yourself.
• Remember personal information about each student and ask him or her about it.
• Use your sense of humor.
• Model the enjoyment of learning something new.
• Each week, invite a few students to share their lunchtime with you.
• Give each student a birthday card.
• Make learning interesting, active, and enjoyable.

Laura Erlauer, The Brain-Compatible Classroom (2003)

• education
• stress
• teaching