Rationalamerican:A Safe Learning Environment

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A Safe Learning Environment

Last edited September 2006, Last reviewed September 2007

Anyone who has attended a recent back-to-school night has probably heard the words “a safe learning environment” spoken by the principal or by teachers. What does this phrase actually mean in the classroom? Given the spate of horrifying news stories over the past few years, one might think the words refer to physical safety, but the full meaning is much deeper than that and well worth understanding.

In his book Teacher & Child popular two decades ago, Dr. Haim Ginott wrote of his first experiences as a young teacher:

“I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I posses tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

His book delved into the emotional climate that teachers create by intent or by misstep in their classrooms. The words “a safe learning environment” are tied up in this idea of an emotional climate created by the interaction between the teacher and the children in a classroom. In this positive emotional climate children feel at ease taking risks, making mistakes and extending themselves past their comfort zone. As some specific examples will show, a teacher must be thoroughly aware of the psychological aspects of child development, aware of unintentional bias, aware of cultural differences, and attentive to his or her own state of mind in order to effectively create a safe environment for learning.

Every teacher in training is taught at some point in a college course the well known gender bias in classrooms. Numerous studies have shown that teachers tend to treat boys and girls differently. In previous decades such bias was blatant, such as reading books showing that boys grow up to be doctors and construction workers, but girls grow up to be nurses and housewives. Researchers David and Myer Sadket have shown in studies that the bias is far more subtle today. Teachers tend to call on boys more often in class, spend more time with them individually, and even face them while talking more often than with girls. This is due partly to cultural differences long evident in many societies and also to biological differences between boys and girls. Boys are often more vocal and more aggressive in seeking attention, and so they get it. Teachers are advised to give girls more time to answer questions and to force themselves to mind the time they spend with girls over boys, among other tactics. A safe learning environment requires that girls feel as comfortable as boys in class participation and that they are not hurried or shut out by the often boisterous boys.

Teachers must also be careful not to individually label children in academic or social terms. A teacher who unconsciously thinks of Bobby as a bit of a crybaby, or believes Rachael is a poor writer will be in danger of introducing that bias to interactions with that child. It sounds simple enough, but with twenty-something kids in a classroom it takes great concentration on the part of the teacher to avoid acting on individual bias. Bobby may very well be a crybaby, but to create a safe learning environment for that child and for other children watching, the teacher must learn methods of minimizing the child’s unhealthy behavior while encouraging better forms of expression. Multiply that delicate effort times twenty-something.

Developing egos can be quite fragile and a safe learning environment corresponds to classroom tactics that avoid damaging or stopping that development. In studies of children and self-worth, it has been shown that some children will avoid asking questions, or be disruptive, or blame others when they feel they will otherwise be publicly exposed as lacking knowledge or ability. These so called “maladaptive classroom behaviors” on the part of children occur when they feel threatened in a social or emotional sense; they happen when children are embarrassed or humiliated based on their own perception of the circumstances. If left unchecked, these children may simply shut down and avoid all participation and therefore all learning.

As a result, teachers creating a safe learning environment must avoid some teaching devices that were very common in years past. Devices like having children complete math problems on the chalkboard or whiteboard in front of the class, or having children read aloud in “round-robin” format are too likely to produce embarrassment or humiliation to be included in a modern classroom. Individual attention and smaller group activities are the better way to go. Spot questioning of students in a manner that puts them on the hot-seat in front of the class is another poor choice. Practices that group children in the class by ability or that compare and contrast individual children in a public way are ill-advised too. Such practices include group labels (the blue jays and the robins) which children quickly determine are code for “the smart ones” and the “dumb ones.”

Public charts and comparisons of achievement or of behavior also serve in the eyes of the children to separate the smart from the dumb or the good from the bad. This has a caustic effect on future participation by the children on the “dumb” or “bad” side of the chart. In the same vein, peer grading whereby students trade papers and mark each other’s work is more effective at creating anxiety and fear of being labeled than it is at saving time. Far from overprotecting students, removing these sorts of teaching devices insures that children will feel comfortable participating in class and at ease with their own ability. That is the fundamental basis of a safe learning environment.

Cultural and religious differences between children are another minefield for the classroom teacher to navigate. It is very common for one student to pen a short story about hunting deer in the woods with his bow and arrow, while the student next to him writes a story about his vegetarian family. Some students may want to stay seated during the pledge of allegiance or not say the words “under God” due to their religious or family beliefs. Some students may not participate in class parties or they may have other restrictions based on religion or culture. It is the job of the classroom teacher to foster self-expression without public judgment; to foster an environment where differences are accepted and not highlighted.

Even the overall tone of the classroom experience is part of a safe learning environment. As the widely admired teacher Albert Cullum put it, “If I am not having fun, then my students are not having fun either.” Certainly teachers have lousy days just like everybody else. To a large degree, though, teachers must be able to recognize and then put aside their own stress and their own worries when the school bell rings. In the landmark work On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers writes:

“Learning will be facilitated, it would seem, if the teacher is congruent. This involves the teacher’s being the person that he is, and being openly aware of the attitudes he holds…Thus he becomes a real person in the relationship with his students. He can be enthusiastic about subjects he likes, and bored by topics he does not like…Because he accepts his feeling as his feelings, he has no need to impose them on his students, or to insist that they feel the same way.”

Individual teachers must also capitalize upon their own unique interests and abilities to keep up the level of enthusiasm necessary to create a safe learning environment. Schools must therefore give teachers the curricular and organizational flexibility to apply their individuality. Fulfilled teachers are more effective because their passion is absorbed directly into the pores of developing children.

Carl Rogers noted:

“Another implication for the teacher is that significant learning may take place if the teacher can accept the student as he is, and can understand the feeling he possesses…the teacher who can warmly accept, who can provide an unconditional positive regard, and who can empathize with the feelings of fear, anticipation, and discouragement which are involved in meeting new material, will have done a great deal toward setting the conditions for learning.”

Many decades later, this theme of unconditional acceptance is echoed by other experts who are finding that students who feel unconditionally accepted by teachers are more motivated to take challenges and to go beyond minimum expectations. Unconditional acceptance means that conditions are not placed on being accepted as part of the classroom community or on being accepted by the teacher. The teacher’s attention or affection does not depend on a certain grade, a particular ability, or a demonstration of one type of behavior. Even praise must be carefully considered. As Haim Ginnott put it:

“Evaluative praise is destructive, appreciative praise is productive. Judgmental praise…creates anxiety, invites dependency, and evokes defensiveness. It is not conducive to self-reliance, self-direction, and self-control. These qualities demand freedom from outside judgment.”

In other words, when students feel as though they must jump over a specific hurdle in order to be praised or to win approval, they may begin to create a kind of artificial persona; they try to become something they are not in order to please. That can lead to destructive behavior and a feeling of isolation. It isn’t that teachers cannot celebrate achievement but rather that their approval should not depend on particular achievement. Students who feel valued regardless of their achievement are more willing to take on bigger challenges, which, again, is the whole point of a safe learning environment.

In the September 2005 issue of Educational Leadership, Alfie Kohn observes:

“Unconditional teachers are not afraid to be themselves with students—to act like real human beings rather than crisply controlling authority figures. Their classrooms have an appealing informality about them…They make it clear that although there are certain expectations in the classroom—expectations that, ideally, the students themselves have helped to create—the teacher’s basic affection need not be earned…Accepting students for who they are, rather than for what they do, is integrally related to the idea of teaching to the whole child.”

The creation of a safe learning environment is a complex and sometimes tricky endeavor that falls squarely upon the shoulders of the classroom teacher. Exceptional teachers versed in creating a safe learning environment make it second nature to avoid individual bias, to shun labels, to consider the potential for public humiliation in every lesson, to minimize the consequences of cultural and religious differences, to be a real person with genuine enthusiasm, and to accept all of their students unconditionally.

To cite this article:

Painter, John. A Safe Learning Environment. (September 2006). Retrieved month x, 2xxx, from

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