school surroundings essay

Essay on School Environment

Students are often asked to write an essay on School Environment in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on School Environment

Importance of school environment.

A school environment plays a crucial role in shaping a student’s life. It is a place where we learn, grow, and develop essential skills.

Physical Environment

The physical environment includes classrooms, libraries, labs, and playgrounds. It should be clean, safe, and conducive to learning.

Social Environment

The social environment involves relationships with teachers and peers. A positive social environment promotes respect, cooperation, and understanding.

Academic Environment

The academic environment focuses on learning and intellectual growth. It encourages curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.

In conclusion, a good school environment nurtures and inspires students to reach their full potential.

250 Words Essay on School Environment

The importance of a school environment.

A school environment plays an instrumental role in shaping a student’s academic, social, and emotional growth. It is not just a physical space where learning occurs, but a complex ecosystem that encompasses various elements, including teachers, students, curriculum, and infrastructure.

Physical Aspects of School Environment

The physical aspects of a school environment significantly influence students’ engagement and learning outcomes. Well-ventilated classrooms, clean surroundings, and access to facilities such as libraries and laboratories foster an atmosphere conducive to learning. Moreover, the availability of sports and recreational facilities promotes physical well-being, contributing to holistic development.

Social and Emotional Aspects

The social and emotional aspects of a school environment are equally crucial. An environment that encourages respect, inclusivity, and collaboration nurtures a sense of belonging among students. It fosters positive relationships, builds self-esteem, and promotes emotional intelligence.

Role of Teachers

Teachers play a pivotal role in creating a positive school environment. Their teaching style, attitude, and interaction with students can either motivate or demotivate learners. Teachers who establish a supportive and responsive classroom environment encourage students to actively participate in the learning process.

In conclusion, a positive school environment is a cornerstone of effective learning. It not only enhances academic performance but also fosters social and emotional development. Therefore, schools should strive to create an environment that is physically comfortable, socially nurturing, and emotionally supportive.

500 Words Essay on School Environment

The essence of a school environment.

Schools are not just brick and mortar structures where academic knowledge is imparted. They are dynamic ecosystems where young minds are nurtured, shaped, and molded into responsible citizens. The environment of a school plays a pivotal role in the holistic development of a student, fostering not just intellectual growth but also social, emotional, and moral development.

The Impact of Physical Environment

The physical environment of a school is the first aspect that influences a student’s learning experience. A well-maintained, clean, and vibrant infrastructure can create a positive ambiance that enhances the learning process. Classrooms, libraries, laboratories, sports facilities, and even the school cafeteria contribute to the overall physical environment. These spaces must be designed and maintained in a manner that encourages curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. The physical environment should also cater to the safety and health of students, ensuring adequate sanitation, ventilation, and emergency preparedness.

The Role of Social Environment

The social environment of a school, shaped by the interactions between students, teachers, and other staff members, is equally crucial. A respectful, inclusive, and positive social environment fosters a sense of belonging among students. It encourages them to participate actively in school activities, express their ideas freely, and develop healthy relationships. The social environment also plays a significant role in shaping a student’s behavior, attitudes, and values. Schools must therefore prioritize building a supportive and respectful social environment that celebrates diversity and promotes mutual respect.

The Importance of Emotional Environment

The emotional environment of a school is often overlooked, but it is a vital aspect of a student’s school experience. A positive emotional environment is one where students feel safe, valued, and understood. It promotes emotional well-being and resilience, enabling students to cope with stress, overcome challenges, and develop emotional intelligence. Schools must therefore create an environment where students’ emotional needs are acknowledged and addressed, and where mental health is given the same importance as physical health and academic achievement.

The Influence of Moral Environment

The moral environment of a school shapes the character and values of its students. Schools have a responsibility to instill in students a strong moral compass, guiding them towards ethical behavior and responsible citizenship. This can be achieved by integrating moral and ethical education into the curriculum, promoting community service, and setting a good example through the behavior of teachers and staff.

In conclusion, the environment of a school is a complex and multifaceted entity that significantly influences a student’s development. It is the collective responsibility of school administrators, teachers, parents, and students themselves to create and maintain a positive and conducive school environment. Such an environment not only enhances academic achievement but also contributes to the development of well-rounded individuals who are equipped to face the challenges of the future.

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A school environment is a crucial component of student’s life. Schools should provide students with a safe environment in which to nurture and grow emotionally, behaviourally and academically; and at the same developing relationships with others. Each and every student requires structure, respect, stability, limitation and boundaries and safe environment or an environment. In the school environment, there are things that positively influence students’ performance. Such things include having good friends within the school, perceiving that teachers are caring and supportive, believing that discipline is efficient and fair, participating in extracurricular activities, being a part of a school and having a sense of belonging. Students become incorporated in their environment when they perceive that the adults in the school mind about them as individuals and their learning.

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Role of effective school environment

Students who perceive to be connected to their school environment are less likely to be involved in risky health behaviours such as drug use, early sex, violence, cigarette smoking, suicidal attempts and thoughts and do better academically. An escalating connection between the students and their environment reduces fighting, bullying, vandalism, and absenteeism while enhancing education motivation, academic performance, completion rates and school attendance. Students are more prone to prosper when they feel a connection to the school. Students who view their school administration and teachers as creating a well-structured learning environment in which expectations are high, fair, caring and clear are more likely to be linked to the school and succeed.

Ways to develop an effective school environment

Regardless of other circumstances, an effective school environment could have a positive impact on the achievements of students. There are several ways to develop an effective school environment. Firstly, create an organised and safe place. An effective school environment must first be a place where students can perceive themselves as emotionally and physically safe. It has to be a supportive community where teachers and kids from all backgrounds can exclusively focus on learning. To attain safe environment where students are free to reach their potential academically, schools have to concentrate on hindering misbehaviour through the implementation of school-wide positive behaviour intervention. These interventions must stress emotional learning and social skills to educate students on cultural understanding and conflict resolution.

Secondly, the school should have a relatable leader. In an efficient school environment, the principle should be a leader of leaders. The principal should not only be an authority figure but also be a partner, cheerleader and coach. Also, the principal should also realise that he or she must not operate in a top-down authority structure but realise that the best and appropriate solutions arises from a collaborative effort.

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The Essential Traits of a Positive School Climate

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The single most important job of the principal is creating a school environment where students feel safe, supported, engaged, and accepted, according to many child development and school leadership experts.

The reason?

Children who are afraid of bullying or fights have less bandwidth for learning. Negative emotions, such as feeling alienated or misunderstood, make it harder for the brain to process information and to learn.

On the flip side, brain development flourishes when children feel emotionally and physically safe, when they know they have adults who care about them, and when they are challenged in their learning.

It’s no wonder, then, that research has found that a positive school climate can improve students’ academic achievement, attendance, engagement, and behavior, as well as teacher satisfaction and retention.

While this may all seem like a no-brainer—of course students learn better when they feel safe and seen—the practice of creating and sustaining a positive school climate can be extremely difficult. School climate involves everyone connected to the school—students, teachers, support staff, administrators and parents—and almost all aspects of their experiences in school—from how teachers address students to whether the school building is kept clean.

What, then, are the hallmarks of a healthy school climate and what can principals do to nurture and sustain one?

Here are four widely agreed upon components of a healthy school environment, why they matter, and how principals can improve them.

Strong relationships are the foundation.

Do students find it easy to talk to teachers in their school? Do they feel there is a teacher who would notice their absence?

Positive and stable relationships among staff, students, and caregivers undergird a school’s climate. It’s vital that children feel they are known and supported in school. And while this may sound obvious, it is something that many schools struggle with.

“We have found that a lot of people don’t understand what that means, it’s not about social relationships,” says Elaine Allensworth, the director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research which has extensively studied principals’ roles in shaping school climate. “Students want to know that their teachers are going to help them succeed in school.”

Strong relationships not only help students feel safe and accepted in their school, they also help students build resilience to cope with adverse childhood experiences.

There are innumerous strategies for building relationships . Teachers can greet each student as they enter the classroom. They can conduct daily check-in exercises where they ask students how they are feeling. Principals in elementary schools can “loop” classrooms keeping teachers with the same group of students for multiple years. At the middle and high school levels, they can create an advisory system where teachers work with a small, consistent group of students weekly or daily to build a sense of community.

Students aren’t the only ones who benefit from investing in relationships. Stronger connections between teachers and students makes teachers feel like their work is more effective and closer relationships among teachers helps them feel more supported. Caregivers are more comfortable asking the school for help for their child if they feel they have strong relationships with their children’s teachers and principal.

Principals can forge deeper relationships with parents by actively seeking their input on how school is working for their children—either by asking teachers reach out to parents for informal chats or distributing surveys to families to fill out.

Principals can help foster positive connections among teachers—whether in person or remotely—by setting a few minutes aside during staff meetings for exercises that build relationships . One simple idea: a gratitude circle where staff members are given time to reflect on small things their coworkers have done for them recently and to directly thank one another for the favor or kindness.

High academic expectations, yes, but also strong supports.

Do teachers feel that it is part of their job to prepare students to succeed in college? Does the school encourage students to take challenging classes no matter their race, ethnicity, or cultural background?

Another hallmark of a healthy school climate is one where educators have high academic expectations for all students.

Educators assist students in setting meaningful academic goals for themselves and promote a strong academic culture where post-secondary education is a goal.

But it’s not enough for teachers to, say, constantly talk to students about going to college or following their dreams. Schools must also provide students with the tools they need to meet the expectations they are raising for students.

High expectations without support just sets students up for failure, undermining their confidence, says Allensworth.

Principals must carve out space in the school schedule to give students the extra time and help they need, said Jack Baldermann, the principal of Westmont High School in Illinois. For example, “we have a period every Wednesday at the end of the day … where students and teachers can work on their assessment information and fine tune where they are strong and where they can get stronger,” he said.

Additionally, that support should be given automatically. Principals should create support systems where students must opt-out of help rather than opt-in, said Allensworth.

Whether a student struggling academically gets the additional support they need shouldn’t depend on a student feeling comfortable enough to ask for help or a teacher taking it upon themselves to follow up with a student.

Consistency in expectations for behavior and discipline for misbehavior.

Do adults reward students for positive behavior? Are school rules applied equally to all students? Do students see discipline as fair?

A safe and orderly environment is another key aspect of a good school climate, and rules and discipline are tools that principals and teachers use to make that happen. But schools must have clear expectations for behavior, teach students how to meet those expectations, and acknowledge when students are doing so.

In a school with a healthy climate, principals, teachers, and staff focus on prevention. When discipline is used, it’s attuned to preserving relationships and respecting students’ dignity.

Discipline, when doled out, should be appropriate to students’ developmental stage and proportional to their behavior, taking care to ensure there are procedures for students with disabilities, and that all students are disciplined following established rules.

Students should be taken out of class only as a last resort, and if they are removed, they should be placed in an alternative setting that provides them with academic instruction.

There are many strategies for improving school discipline such as using restorative justice practices and positive behavioral interventions and supports.

But whatever strategy a school is using to address misbehavior, it is of utmost importance that rules be consistently enforced among all students regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and disability state, said Francis Huang, an associate professor in the college of education at the University of Missouri and an expert on school climate.

When rules aren’t applied equitably, students don’t see them as fair, he said. “If they don’t think they’re fair, it may challenge students to test those rules.”

To make sure rules are being applied consistently, principals can start by reviewing the discipline data to look for trends as well as the procedures for discipline referrals.

A next step is to directly ask students, teachers, and parents—either in-person or through anonymous surveys—whether they feel school rules are applied equitably and discipline is fair.

Any changes to discipline policies can become a major source of friction between principals and teachers, so it’s important principals clearly communicate new expectations to staff and provide them with adequate training on how to implement new discipline programs.

Regular collection of feedback, followed by adjustments.

Once the school starts a new program, does leadership follow up to make sure that it’s working?

Underneath the robust relationships, high but supported academic expectations, and thoughtful discipline, school leaders who are successful at setting and sustaining a healthy school climate are consistently gathering feedback on how the school community is experiencing school life.

This is primarily done by surveying students, staff, and parents a few times a year, asking the kinds of questions posed throughout this article.

Combined with data on discipline, attendance, test scores, and even small focus groups, principals can get a quantitative and qualitative read on the health of the school’s environment and how to improve it.

Not having data is like trying to fly a plane without any instruments, said Huang. Without data, principals can’t know what adjustments need to be made to stay aloft or how far they are from their destination or goals.

Data illuminates weaknesses that need shoring up and provides feedback on whether a new intervention is working and improving school climate.

Data is also important for supporting equitable outcomes because it can help unearth inequities among student groups, such as whether students of a particular race are getting suspended at higher rates or report feeling less supported by the adults in their school.

It’s important to remember that not all students will experience their school the same way and that individual students’ perceptions of their school’s environment and culture matter to their learning.

Share the data widely—incorporate it into staff meetings, parent meetings, share it in newsletters and townhalls—to broaden its impact and communicate the importance of building and keeping a positive school climate.

Other components of school climate:

There isn’t total consensus on all the components that add up to a healthy school climate and culture.

While some definitions focus on the social and academic aspects of school climate, the concept can also include physical features such as how clean the building is and whether the lights and heating work properly, which creates a welcoming environment and demonstrates to students that school leaders care about their comfort. Procedural considerations such as having emergency plans in place, which factor into feelings of safety, can also fall into the school climate bucket, as can community-building extracurriculars such as clubs and events.

But the bottom line, school leadership experts say, is that principals must decide what the definition of a positive climate is for their school—one that is relevant to their community and based on research—before they can take steps to strengthen it.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the October 14, 2020 edition of Education Week as The Essential Traits of a Positive School Climate

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

School environments and elementary school children’s well-being in northwestern mexico.

• 1 Programs of Master and Doctorate in Psychology, University of Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico
• 2 Programs of Master and Doctorate in Social Sciences, University of Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico

School environment refers to the set of relationships that occur among members of a school community that are determined by structural, personal, and functional factors of the educational institution, which provide distinctiveness to schools. The school environment is an important factor when evaluating student well-being. Previous findings have shown that variables such as physical, academic, and social dimensions influence school environments. This research seeks to explain the relationship between school environment and the well-being of primary education students. To carry out this research, a total of 405 students from four public elementary schools in northwestern Mexico were selected to participate. The instrument used to measure the variables and the relationship of school environment and well-being is based on the three dimensions of school environment proposed by Kutsyuruba et al. (2015) : Physical, social, and academic. Statistical analyses were carried out to determine the reliability and validity of the measurement scales using SPSS V20 and EQS software. Confirmatory factor analysis models were tested to determine the construct validity of each scale; then, an analysis via structural equation modeling was made to form an explanatory model obtaining acceptable practical and statistical indicators. Among the relationships in this study, our research identified the variable of school environments as an outcome determined by physical, academic, and social factors. School environment and student well-being variables were also found to be correlated.

Introduction

The study of the physical, social, and academic (curricular) conditions of the environment and the administrative organization of schools have been related to school environments and the well-being of students ( Corral-Verdugo et al., 2015 ). Nowadays, it has become more common to find empirical studies that identify the impact of school environments on student well-being. For example, safe school environments and student well-being have been found to be significantly and strongly interrelated variables on research of various kinds of students’ needs ( Kutsyuruba et al., 2015 ).

Primarily, research of positive school environment is focused on physical conditions: density, privacy, activity areas, open spaces, and, even, green areas. Some of the most researched effects from physical elements have been the ones resulting from noise, lighting and colors, temperature and humidity, decoration, and furniture, since they contain properties that have effects on people’s behavior; nevertheless, despite having found evidence of these effects, the results are not considered entirely conclusive ( Olivos and Amérigo, 2010 ). The quality of these conditions in school infrastructure can have direct effects on the behavior and cognitive, social, and emotional development of children ( Prescott and David, 1976 ; Wohlwill and Heft, 1987 ; Moore et al., 2003 ). In other words, the school space is considered a didactic agent that helps to offer optimal physical conditions for the development of the teaching-learning process. Likewise, it allows for the creation of an adequate environment for the development of students’ abilities, fostering their autonomy as well as teacher motivation.

Romañá (1994) focused on the role that the environment takes as an object of attention for learning. There are three ideas about how it has been addressed: (a) conceiving the environment as an educator: the nature of physical elements of the environment as socializing agents themselves; (b) considering it as an educational object for the valuation and conservation of the environment, and (c) and conceiving it as an educational or didactic resource; in other words, as a pedagogical utility factor.

Olivos and Amérigo (2010) performed a historical review and background check on the study of the connection between environment and education and identified that it had been studied in the fields of pedagogy, where it had been called “environmental pedagogy” ( Göttler, 1955 ) or “mesological pedagogy” ( Zaniewski, 1952 ); and psychology, under the term “classroom ecology” ( Sommer, 1967 ; Weinstein, 1979 ). Other authors have also underlined how the emotional dimension is an important component in the development of evaluation competences, such as for example, the aesthetic evaluation experience, and we argue that this component could also be relevant for the evaluation of school environments (e.g., Mastandrea, 2014 ; Mastandrea and Crano, 2019 ).

At the end of the 20th century, environmental psychology focused its attention on the study of school environments, specifically on aspects of practical conditions such as ergonomics and architecture, considering particular physical aspects of the school environment and its role in the process of teaching learning and even associating it with academic performance ( Holahan, 1986 ; Gump, 1987 ; Bell et al., 1990 ; Gifford, 2007 ; Amedeo et al., 2008 ).

However, there are always challenges for the design and management of educational spaces and they overcome the traditional difficulties of improving the teaching-learning process in conflictful conditions resulting from social interaction within school environments. A wide range of studies has found a reduction of negative or violent behaviors that are usually present in schools are due to management changes in physical environments ( Bosworth et al., 2011 ; Steffgen et al., 2013 ; Cornell et al., 2015 ). Current trends in educational intervention consider the promotion of positive personal interactions as a priority and as a cause or consequence of harmonious activities of the school with its environment, putting integration into practice ( Corral-Verdugo et al., 2015 ).

It is in the second decade of the 21st century when special attention was paid to the study of school environments ( Bernardes and Vergara, 2017 ), school climate ( Wang and Degol, 2016 ; Maxwell et al., 2017 ) and its connection with student well-being ( Bird and Markle, 2012 ; Borkar, 2016 ).

Currently, research on physical aspects in school environments has gained attention as a result of the theoretical relevance of the human-environment link, the new conceptions about the importance of social interactions in the educational environment, and questions about the objectives of education in the modern world ( Aldridge and McChesney, 2018 ; Lundberg and Abdelzadeh, 2019 ).

In existing literature, this has been an extensively investigated subject in an attempt to depict a complete model of school environments. We have not only taken into consideration the contributions of Thapa et al. (2013) , who identify five dimensions that converge in security, social relations, teaching/learning, institutional environment (both physical and administrative), and process of school improvement; but also the ones from Bradshaw et al. (2014) , who suggested that there are three elements that affect the formation of safe and supportive school models, including the variables of commitment, safety, and environment. Both reflect the evolution of research in this area; and, despite their success in the identification of some relevant dimensions of school environment, they still suffer from a lack of variables to consider.

Particularly, as a basis for this study, we reference the contributions of Kutsyuruba et al. (2015) which, as a result from an exhaustive review of published empirical evidence, conclude in a common axis categorization of the school environment named “dimensions of the school climate” that consists of three main categories: (a) physical, refers to the condition of school facilities, the environmental quality of schools, and their relationship with the educational performance and behavior of students; (b) academic, where it is mentioned that the personal skills and characteristics of teachers serve as factors for the development of their students; and finally, (c) social, this specific category suggests that the quality of relationships between members of the school community is fundamental in the configuration of the school climate. These categories shape a conceptual framework that can be regarded as a multidimensional construction of the components and conditions of a positive or safe school environment ( Kutsyuruba et al., 2015 ).

Our study incorporates and integrates these three dimensions into a variable called school environment and evaluates its impact on student well-being. The participating population consists of children from fifth and sixth grade of primary education in Hermosillo, Mexico. Figure 1 shows the hypothetical model of variable correlations under study, where we propose that the physical dimension comprises the classroom, playground, and library elements; that the academic dimension consists of variables related to students, teaching methodology, didactic strategies, and evaluation; and the social dimension is constituted by justice, sustainability, and social behavior.

Figure 1. Hypothetic model of the relationship between school environment and well-being.

Conceptualization of Categories in the Study

School environment.

Space for the delivery of materials that correspond to the areas of basic knowledge where students and teachers interact with furniture that enables individual or group work. Recently it has been mentioned that specific characteristics of the classroom’s physical environment are related to student satisfaction, attitudes, and evaluation of the quality of the course ( Fraser, 2015 ; Han et al., 2019 ).

School yard

Spaces in which students perform educational, civic, recreational, and food-related activities. In a recent study, Dilbil and Basaran (2017) argue that playgrounds positively affected cognitive development and levels of attachment of children to school.

Space that is well-conditioned to read, learn, and consult a bibliographic collection belonging to the school community where students can interact and work. Schultz-Jones (2011) conducted a study to explain how an evaluation of the learning environment of the school library can be used to demonstrate a positive impact on student performance.

Student relationship

In the educational context, the teacher–student relationship is one of the most outstanding academic interactions at the core of the teaching-learning process. Even though this interaction is composed by many other elements, this relationship is the one that plays the most important role when it comes to meeting educational objectives ( Bertoglia, 2008 ). Affective teacher–student communication and interaction plays an important role in building a teacher–student support relationship and a positive classroom environment ( Roorda et al., 2011 ; Poulou, 2014 ).

Teaching methods

The didactic methods are part of the methodological aptitudes that a trainer must have. This means that these types of methods will influence the degree of intervention of the trainer on the student ( Calvo, 2006 ). Teachers’ classroom management practices have a direct impact on the probability of success of their students ( Gage et al., 2018 ). Classroom management and methods are a major challenge for teachers and school administrators, often qualified as the main area of concern for teachers and the most common reason why many choose to leave their profession. Recently, academic research on emotional health, especially during the early years of childhood, has had a greater interest in social and emotional learning and its relationship with the improvement of student behavior ( Caldarella et al., 2012 ).

For Bordas and Cabrera (2001) , an evaluation system within the classroom will be convenient as long as the students feel like active agents; learn to value their actions and learning, know and understand the curricular objectives; as well as understand the aspects of evaluation in certain tasks. Since the data that teachers receive from their evaluation serve as references for the future, it is necessary to think more deeply about the content of these evaluations, in addition to how we can create conditions for teachers to use this evaluation to inform their instructional methods ( Datnow and Hubbard, 2015 ).

Teaching strategies

The term strategy implies reflexive planning to do something by applying any general model used in the classroom ( Orlich et al., 2012 ). Previous studies have concluded that teachers in primary education use different teaching strategies as students gain knowledge through experience, participation in education, express their opinion, and solve problems ( Hus and Grmek, 2011 ).

Konow (2003) refers to justice as a virtue that is attached to what is morally correct, concerning the ethics, rationality, natural law, equity, or religion in which they base their foundations.

Sustainability

Regarding sustainability, it is important to mention that there are two studies that have prioritized the analysis of sustainable or environmental education. These are “Literature on Environmental Education” ( De Castro, 2010 ) and “Education for Sustainability” by Corral (2010) which required this component to focus more on environmental protection behaviors, forgetting the point that students can obtain various types of benefits when practicing sustainable behaviors ( Corral-Verdugo et al., 2015 ).

Social coexistence

Refers to the way students relate with others and how those relationships have important consequences in his/her personal development. Ponferrada-Arteaga and Carrasco-Pons (2010) explain that the emotional expectations that students have about their own school and the degree of recognition and legitimization of the differences manifested by the practices of the school institution influence how students deal with each other at school. A study made by Tian et al. (2016) shows that social support experienced in school is significantly related to subjective well-being.

Well-being is often interpreted as growth and human satisfaction; it is deeply influenced by the surrounding contexts of people’s lives and, as such, the opportunities for self-realization ( Ryff and Singer, 2008 ). Well-being incorporates the challenges that individuals face in their attempts to fully function and realize their potential ( Keyes, 2006 ; Medina-Calvillo et al., 2013 ).

One of the reasons why this topic was chosen is because literature that analyzes the conditions of school environments at the basic level requires empiric evidence that proves its impact in children well-being.

Materials and Methods

The main objective of the study was to test a model where the variable “school environment” is determined by physical, academic, and social dimensions. Our variables were “school environment” and “well-being.” The aim of the study focused on a correlational methodology with the purpose of measuring the degree of relationship between the variables mentioned above ( Sampieri et al., 1998 ). It also has a non-experimental design, since the phenomenon was experienced and measured as it occurred in its natural context. We employed an instrument consisting of different scales that evaluate each of the variables and constructions of the model ( Supplementary Data Sheet 1 ).

Participants

Four primary schools at the primary level were evaluated, two of them public and two private, all in the city of Hermosillo, Mexico. A total of 405 students were surveyed, 212 females and 193 males, aged between 10 and 12. At the time of the study, the students were in the fifth and sixth grade of primary school.

Measurements

After deciding on what type of data needed to be collected, the instrument chosen was a survey that consisted of four variables divided in 11 subscales for a total of 63 items. In addition, the survey also included a brief questionnaire inquiring about certain demographic variables related to gender, grade, age, and school.

Physical Dimension

This scale assessed the educational spaces such as the classroom, the school yards, and the library. It comprised 15 items and was a semantic differential type scale, where two opposing adjectives are presented and the response is selected from six intermediate values.

Academic Dimension

A 24-item scale divided into four subscales: teacher’s relationship with students, teaching methodology, evaluation, and teaching strategies. All subscales were structured with Likert questions, where the response options were “never,” “almost never,” “almost always,” and “always.” In relationship with other students, they were presented with a scale consisting of eight items; the didactic methodology scale has 10 items; the evaluation scale with four items; and, finally, the scale of teaching strategies which includes four items.

Social Dimension

Contained three subscales with 11 items, the first one, referring to justice, included four semantic differential type items. The next section, sustainability, was composed of four items also elaborated in Likert scales with four response options going from “never” to “always.” Finally, the social coexistence scale ( Fraijo-Sing et al., 2014 ) evaluated three groups of social interaction, two corresponding to school and one from home, was a Likert scale about satisfaction with five response options ranging from “very unsatisfied” to “very satisfied.”

An adaptation for children of the Van Dierendonck (2004) version of Ryff’s (1989) psychological well-being scale (psychological well-being scales, SPWB), from which 13 items were selected, corresponding to the categories of self-acceptance, personal growth, and purpose with life.

Except for the social coexistence and well-being scale, the rest were specifically developed for the purpose of this study and were tested in a regional context (Northern Mexico).

First, a non-random sample was selected; that is, there was a process by which data were extracted to be analyzed, where the universe consists of elementary school students from the city of Hermosillo, Mexico. In the next phase, there was a request for authorization from the directors of the educational institutions to proceed with the application of the instrument. This was carried out in a period of 2 weeks, when students were surveyed in groups in their respective classrooms, without teacher intervention but with their approval.

It is important to emphasize that this instrument was tested as reliable and valid by comparing the magnitude of the different variables and indicators. Once the surveys were answered and the numerical valuations of variables were made, we obtained ranges of values for the responses, as well as the different trends obtained. Through this data analysis, we transformed the data into information that was used to answer our research questions by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v21.0). Using this, we analyzed the psychometric properties and construct validity through exploratory factor analysis, reliability through Cronbach’s alpha, analysis of descriptive data of each of the scales, and correlation coefficients between the scales ( Supplementary Table 1 ).

Subsequently, we tested the structural model using the statistical program EQS. First, we analyzed the measurement models of each of the variables. Then, we performed a structural model analysis to test the model of school environments using procedures in first instance plot development (sets of two variables). Likewise, first and second order variables were formed.

Table 1 shows the correlation matrix of the measured variables of scholar environment and their internal consistencies. The Cronbach’s alpha values in all used scales turned out to be appropriate, indicating an acceptable reliability coefficient of the instruments. Overall, the correlations go from moderate, but statistically significant, to strongly correlated.

Table 1. Univariate statistics and their relationship to school environment and well-being.

Structural Model

Figure 2 shows the structural model that illustrates the relationship between the variables “school environment” (composed of physical, academic, and social factors) and “well-being.” In reference to model fitting and its interpretation, researchers use numerous goodness-of-fit indicators to assess a model. Some common fit indexes are the normed fit index (NFI), non-normed fit index (NNFI), and comparative fit index (CFI) ( Hu and Bentler, 1999 ). Absolute fit indexes were also employed to evaluate the degree to which the model proposed and how the actual data variance–covariance matrices compare. Some absolute fit indexes include the chi-square statistic and the standardized root-mean-square residual ( Bentler, 1995 ). We can verify that the indicators of goodness of statistical adjustment (X 2 = 570.99, 307 df, p = 0.000) were not significant, so there are no apparent reasons, in mathematical matter ( Corral-Verdugo, 1995 ), to discard this model and the relationships that are illustrated in it. On the other hand, it should also be noted that the goodness of fit indexes adjustments (BBNFI = 0.90, BBNNFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.04.) show that the structural model is supported by the amount of data that was presented in this sample, since all values are equal to or greater than 0.90 ( Bentler, 1990 ).

Figure 2. Structural model of the relationship between school environment and well-being. Goodness of fit: X 2 = 570.99 (307 df ), p = 0.000, BBNFI = 0.90, BBNNFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.04. Well-being R 2 = 0.35.

Our research was presented with the chance to provide additional empirical evidence to the conclusions of the work of Kutsyuruba et al. (2015) , who determined integrative categories associated with studies on school climate and proposed a three-dimensional model: physical, academic, and social. Other studies have offered a conceptual framework derived from a multidimensional construction of components and conditions of a positive school environment ( Wang and Degol, 2016 ). In addition to confirming the relevance of this theoretical–conceptual approach, we recognized a causal relationship between the school environment and the well-being of elementary education students who participated in the study ( Aldridge and McChesney, 2018 ).

The hypothetical model that guided this research was confirmed by the structural model’s second order factor called “school environment” which was shaped by the three dimensions suggested by Kutsyuruba et al. (2015) : physical, academic, and social. In turn, the “school environment” had an effect on the “well-being” variable ( Ryff and Singer, 2008 ), which also allowed us to verify the relevance of the suggestions made by Corral-Verdugo et al. (2015) in their review and conceptualization of a “positive school.”

Hypothesized first-order factors were also conformed by their respective measures and by the nesting of their variables. Confirming these relationships leads us to conclude that the present estimation and evaluation of the school environment dimension model was measured in a valid and pertinent manner for this construct. Results obtained by this model support the ideas of the three-dimensional construct of Kutsyuruba et al. (2015) and confirm this theoretical model in the reality of children of fifth and sixth grade of basic education in Hermosillo, Mexico.

Such remarks allow for some reassurance that we have established some of the variables that could influence a positive school climate ( Bosworth et al., 2011 ; Aldridge and McChesney, 2018 ). In the three dimensions proposed by the model, we can also identify the actions required in order to impact on well-being and its relationship with the academic achievement of the students ( Maxwell et al., 2017 ), their ways of relating to teachers ( Roorda et al., 2011 ), and the relationships they establish with peers and others in their environment ( Tian et al., 2016 ).

In other regards, this work suffers from limitations notably related to methodological aspects and the means used to collect data. Even when speaking about the validity of the instruments and statistical procedures that account for their reliability, the surveys used for this analysis were specifically developed for the purpose of this study on a non-random sample, which may compromise the generalizability of our findings, despite obtaining acceptable goodness of fit indexes. Therefore, we recommend future research should therefore seek to address this issue by devising a specific method for gathering data on random samples by the means of surveys.

A key strength of this research lies within the integration of the three aspects considered in our model. Some studies have discussed variables related to well-being. For instance, how the physical design of space affects learning and the well-being of children ( Martin, 2016 ); how teacher support and the ways it is perceived by students impacts well-being ( Reddy et al., 2003 ); and also, the way social relationships with companions and peers may serve as a protective factor for well-being ( Lindberg and Swanberg, 2006 ). However, gathering all of these variables into a single model can be considered to be a significant step forward in the study of student well-being, as well as which variables should be considered in order to design and promote the implementation of programs concerning well-being in school environments.

The posture of a school environment factor constituted by physical, social, and academic components was verified and adequately supported by the data gathered in our study and the structural model obtained in Figure 2 . The school environment factor also correlated significantly with a measure of well-being as proposed by our hypothetic model. Moreover, our measure of school environment was found to be a valid one given regarding internal consistency where all factors have a reasonable level of reliability; we can see that all the variables show acceptable correlation values as we also consider the goodness of fit indexes obtained.

Our model confirmed that, in order to promote subjective well-being, schools must facilitate the optimal development of people by accepting that all students possess differentiated strengths, recognize its students’ abilities, and offer school environments that imply positivity in aspects concerning the physical, social, and didactic spheres of school life. Insights into these aspects are expected to contribute to a better understanding of how they correspond harmoniously with the abilities and expectations of the students ( Corral-Verdugo et al., 2015 ; Maxwell et al., 2017 ). The potential implementation of these findings has been widely described in literature. A school should aim its goals toward the promotion of the subjective well-being of its students, without neglecting the purposes of developing academic and cognitive skills ( Huebner et al., 2009 ).

In order to design an accurate system, knowledge of the factors that contribute to well-being in school environments is necessary. The application of these research findings should be focused on the advocacy of curricula that embodies these factors, in such a manner that may comprise better practices in school environments ( Bird and Markle, 2012 ). A more interesting and practical scenario would be if findings such as the ones found in this study could be oriented toward the outlining or amelioration of public education programs dedicated to student’s prosperity, learning, and well-being.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Comité de ética en Investigación de la Universidad de Sonora. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

CT-F and BF-S contributed by writing, reviewing, and editing. CT-F and VC-V contributed with conceptualization and design of this study. GG-T ran formal analysis and organized databases. CT-F contributed by supervising this study and its methodological tasks (methodology) were designed by CT-F and BF-S. GG-T and MM-B provided the writing of the original draft. All authors contributed to manuscript revision and read and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00510/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords : school environment, well-being, positive school, children, elementary school

Citation: Tapia-Fonllem C, Fraijo-Sing B, Corral-Verdugo V, Garza-Terán G and Moreno-Barahona M (2020) School Environments and Elementary School Children’s Well-Being in Northwestern Mexico. Front. Psychol. 11:510. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00510

Received: 22 November 2019; Accepted: 03 March 2020; Published: 19 March 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Tapia-Fonllem, Fraijo-Sing, Corral-Verdugo, Garza-Terán and Moreno-Barahona. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: César Tapia-Fonllem, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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The psychosocial school environment

This brief examines the impact of the psychosocial school environment on student learning outcomes. It provides suggestions of how educational planners and decision-makers can ensure a positive learning environment for all.

A positive psychosocial school environment helps to create a conducive environment for effective teaching and learning. It relates to ‘the dynamic relationship between psychological aspects of our experience (our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) and our wider social experience (our relationships, family and community networks, social values, and cultural practices)’ (INEE, 2016: 8). Key elements contributing to the psychosocial school climate include the quality of personal relationships at school, methods used in the process of learning, classroom management and discipline, students’ and teachers’ well-being, prevalence of school-based violence, and social and emotional learning (SEL). 

Key aspects for a nurturing psychosocial environment include:

• People – friendships and relationships that students create with peers and teachers in schools; this also links to effective parental involvement, positive teacher attitudes as well as collaborative practices.
• Process – a fun and engaging atmosphere that allows students and teachers to be creative, collaborative, and free to learn without the fear of making mistakes. This also relates to useful, relevant, and engaging learning content and reasonable workload.
• Place – a warm and friendly school environment with more open classrooms and colourful as well as meaningful displays (UNESCO Office Bangkok, 2016) ( more on the physical school environment ).

Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) recognizes the importance of the psychosocial school environment. Implementation target 4.a aims to ‘build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability, and gender-sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive, and effective learning environments for all’. Thematic Indicator 4.a.2 was adopted in 2018 to measure progress towards this target and to account for the ‘percentage of students who experienced bullying during the past 12 months, by sex’.

What we know

Students’ social and emotional experiences influence learning processes and in turn affect learning outcomes (UNESCO MGIEP, 2020). Schools that prioritize students’ well-being have a higher chance of improving their academic achievements (UNESCO Office Bangkok, 2017). Numerous variables related to school climate have been positively associated with better student performance in reading in OECD countries (e.g. growth mindset of students, greater support from teachers, teacher enthusiasm, greater co-operation among peers, students’ sense of belonging at school) (OECD, 2019). Attending to the social and emotional needs of students and teachers is key, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many students have missed out on social interactions and support from teachers and peers (Yorke et al., 2021). 

The prevalence of school violence (physical, psychological, and sexual), as well as bullying both in-person and online, is a key obstacle to a positive psychosocial school environment (UNESCO, 2017). School violence has a significant impact on the physical and mental well-being of learners, their ability to learn and their educational outcomes. Victims and witnesses of school violence are more likely to miss school, have lower grades, and/or drop out of school entirely. School violence also contributes to their lower self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2015; UNESCO, 2017; Attawell, 2019). PISA 2018 and TIMSS 2019 data demonstrate that greater exposure to bullying was associated with lower performance in reading and mathematics and science respectively (OECD, 2019; Mullis et al., 2019).

Plan International estimates that at least 246 million children suffer from school-related violence every year (Greene et al., 2013). Studies using Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) and the Global School-based Health Survey (GSHS) estimate that, globally, almost one in three students report having been bullied over the past month (Attawell, 2019), but the prevalence and types of bullying vary between regions. According to the End Corporal Punishment initiative,  corporal punishment is still not fully prohibited in schools in 64 countries, and in some of them, it is widespread. A number of surveys established that ‘the proportion of students who had experienced corporal punishment at school was 90% or more in nine countries, 70–89% in 11 countries and 13–69% in 43 countries’ (Attawell, 2019: 20). 

Certain pupil characteristics may place them at a higher risk of experiencing school-based violence. These include physical appearance (e.g. being overweight or underweight), nationality, race and colour, socioeconomic status, gender, indigenous status, sexual orientation, disability, migrant status, HIV status, and orphanhood (UNESCO, 2017). Based on GSHS data, globally, physical appearance is the most frequent reason for bullying (with female students more at risk of being bullied for this reason) followed by bullying based on race, nationality, or colour (Attawell, 2019). However, sexual orientation and gender identity/expression is also often a reason for bullying; data show that a large proportion of LGBT students experience homophobic or transphobic violence in school (UNESCO, 2016). Moreover, indigenous children are particularly vulnerable to school-based violence due to ‘a confluence of factors’ associated with the social exclusion of these groups (UNICEF et al., 2013).

Both boys and girls experience school-based violence. However, while boys are more likely to experience or perpetrate physical bullying, experience harsh discipline, and be involved in physical fights, girls are more subject to psychological bullying such as social exclusion and the spreading of rumours (UNESCO, 2017; Attawell, 2019). Some studies indicate that girls are also at greater risk of cyberbullying (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2015). Comprehensive global data on the prevalence of sexual violence within schools are missing, as related incidents are often under-reported or not disaggregated by sex. Nevertheless, although both female and male children experience gender-based violence, ‘girls are the main victims of unwanted sexual touching and non-consensual sex attempts perpetrated by classmates and teachers, respectively’ (Global Education Monitoring Report team, 2020: 52). 

A number of studies proved the effectiveness of evidence-based SEL programmes to support students’ academic achievements (CASEL, 2020) and reduce bullying and violence in schools and communities (INEE, 2016). By developing competencies such as resilience, self-awareness, collaboration, empathy, and respect, SEL also contributes to students’ pathways beyond education (Yorke et al., 2021). SEL programmes may ‘improve school attendance, engagement, and motivation; reduce negative student behavior … benefit the mental health of staff and students by lowering stress, anxiety, and depression; improve health outcomes by reducing teenage pregnancies and drug abuse; lead to better staff retention and higher morale’ (INEE, 2016: 12). School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic proved the importance of SEL in helping students cope with difficult situations, practice empathy, and manage anxiety and loss (CASEL, 2020). SEL is especially important for disadvantaged children who received limited support during the pandemic (Yorke et al., 2021) or to help those in conflict settings to re-engage with learning (EducationLinks, 2018). 

Lack of governance and accountability mechanisms: Some countries still do not have comprehensive policies to protect students from school-based violence, while others have adopted these laws recently and many remain poorly enforced. In many contexts, effective channels to report violence are missing (UNESCO and UN Women, 2016; Global Education Monitoring Report team, 2020). Legislation to prevent violence occurring online is in even earlier stages of development (Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development and UNESCO, 2019).

Conflicting priorities: Schools face many challenges in managing logistical, pedagogical, organizational, and technological issues to accelerate academic learning; these issues have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (CASEL, 2020). In the context of an increasing emphasis on academic results, it is difficult to keep the focus on socio-emotional skills and school-based violence (Attawell, 2019).

Lack of data: Accurate, reliable, and comprehensive data are needed on the prevalence, nature, and causes of school violence and bullying to inform policy, planning, and budgeting. They are also important to identify perpetrators and hold them responsible for their actions, as well as to protect victims. However, this information is often missing at national and international levels as school-based violence is frequently under-reported and collecting this data is particularly controversial and challenging (Greene et al., 2013; UNESCO and UN Women, 2016; UNESCO, 2017). This is due to the nature and sensitivity of this information, especially when it comes to violence against children perpetrated by adults in a position of power. Consequently, challenges emerge in terms of incorporating related questions into regular school censuses and obtaining reliable national statistics.

There is limited evidence on which strategies are the most effective to reduce school-based violence and improve student well-being. Few policies have been evaluated and existing studies differ in their methodology and rigour (UNESCO and UN Women, 2016; OECD, 2017; Attawell, 2019).

Unprepared teachers: Teachers are often ill-equipped to attend to the social and emotional needs of students, and to manage classrooms and conflicts effectively as well as teach SEL. There is also a lack of teacher development programmes on learner well-being and happiness in education (UNESCO Office Bangkok, 2017; UNESCO MGIEP, 2020).

Social and cultural norms might discourage victims of violence from reporting incidents. They also make it more difficult for some actors (e.g. teachers, policy-makers) to openly speak about issues of violence. Differentiated expected gender roles remain persistent in many contexts, and violence in schools reflects them (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2017).

Poor SEL implementation: SEL programmes are often fragmented, short, and marginalized if not part of the core curriculum. Limited knowledge on how SEL can be infused into academic subjects is also an issue (UNESCO MGIEP, 2020).

Policy and planning

Developing comprehensive national and school policies or laws on school-based violence as well as codes of conduct, digital safety guidance, or other related frameworks for staff and students is a priority for national governments (Greene et al., 2013; UNESCO and UN Women, 2016; UNESCO, 2017). Policies specifically targeting identity-based bullying (e.g. bullying based on race or sexuality) are needed (UNESCO and French Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, 2020).

Improving data collection: Systematic monitoring of the prevalence and type of school-based violence, including violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, is key to addressing related challenges (UNESCO, 2016). This could be done by adding related questions to the annual school census or other data-collection tools that feed into education management information systems (Cornu and Liu, 2019). However, it may be difficult to obtain reliable statistics through this channel, especially when it relates to violence perpetrated by adults against children. Alternative ways to gather this information include large-scale assessments and other specific surveys, such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) programmes. Data-collection channels need to be child-sensitive and confidential. Moreover, rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of existing programmes (e.g. anti-violence or bullying, SEL, students’ well-being) is critical in order to adjust activities appropriately (Attawell, 2019). Results from some large-scale student assessments (e.g. Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study on Education Quality, TERCE; Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems, PASEC) could be used to identify the most effective strategies in specific contexts (Dunne et al., 2017).

Ensuring adequate teacher training: Teachers need to be prepared to equip students with knowledge on how to prevent and respond to school-based violence (UNESCO, 2017), teach SEL, contribute to students’ social and emotional development, recognize and address schoolwork-related anxiety, and manage classrooms effectively (OECD, 2017). Disciplinary issues in classrooms were associated with poorer reading performance in OECD countries (OECD, 2019). Successful countries focused on preparing teachers to use positive approaches to classroom management (Attawell, 2019) and providing them with a range of alternative classroom discipline strategies (Turner and Hares, 2021). Allocating female teachers was a successful strategy to reduce school-based violence in some Latin America countries (Dunne et al., 2017). 

Developing appropriate curricula: Specific curricula can prepare students to recognize and challenge school-based violence and act when it takes place (UNESCO, 2017). Curriculum entry points include ‘civics education, life skills education and comprehensive sexuality education’ (UNESCO, 2017: 39). Moreover, life skills education may play an important role in developing the social and emotional skills that students need to prevent violence (UNESCO, 2017). More generally, it is important to define education outcomes that include SEL and overall student well-being and then monitor them from early grades (INEE, 2019). Analysis of a number of SEL programmes found that the most successful among them were sequenced and focused, used active forms of learning, allocated sufficient time, and had explicit learning goals (INEE, 2016). Appropriate textbooks and learning materials promoting healthy, safe, equal, and non-violent relationships should support the curriculum (UNESCO, 2017).

Cross-sectoral approach and partnerships: Collaboration among education, health, and the youth and social welfare sectors is essential to effectively address and respond to school-based violence, and gender-based violence more specifically (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2015). Addressing school violence also requires coordination among different actors, such as civil society organizations, advocacy groups, academic and research institutions, professional associations, the private sector, and the media (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2015). At the school level, related programmes need to bring together headteachers, teachers, other staff, parents and students, local authorities, and professionals in other sectors (Attawell, 2019). Incorporating anti-bullying strategies within social programmes proved to be very effective in Latin American countries (Dunne et al., 2017). This kind of collaboration is also key to implementing holistic SEL programmes (UNESCO MGIEP, 2020).

Reporting mechanisms: Clear, safe, and accessible channels for reporting and monitoring school-based violence are key to reacting to the act of violence, assisting victims, and measuring the extent of those incidents (Cornu and Liu, 2019). Examples of reporting mechanisms include ‘telephone helplines, chat rooms and online reporting, “happiness and sadness” boxes, and school focal points such as teachers’, as well as using girls’ clubs as ‘safe spaces’ to report sexual violence (UNESCO, 2017: 45).

Whole-school approach: Anti-bullying programmes that work at multiple levels in the school (e.g. teacher training; school management, rules, and sanctions; mediation training; appropriate curriculum; information-sharing and engagement with parents/communities; counselling for victims, bystanders, and perpetrators) proved successful in developing countries (Global Education Monitoring Report team and UNGEI, 2015). A whole-school approach is also needed to address other types of school violence (Turner and Hares, 2021) and integrate SEL into school operations (UNESCO MGIEP, 2020). Strengthening school leadership and ensuring support from the provincial education authorities is important to make sure policies are implemented, codes of conduct enforced, reporting system monitored, and action taken as needed (Beadle and Bordoloi, 2019).  

Plans and policies

• South Africa : National School Safety Framework (2015)
• Seychelles : National Anti-Bullying Policy and Strategy for Primary, Secondary Schools and Professional Centre (2018)
• Malta : Trans, Gender Variant and Intersex Students in Schools Policy (2015)
• Guatemala : Protocolo de identificación, atención y referencia de casos de violencia dentro del sistema educativo nacional (2012)
• UNICEF Child-Friendly Schools Manual (2009)
• WHO School-based Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook (2019)
• Safe to Learn Global Programmatic Framework and Benchmarking Tool (2021)
• UNESCO LGBTQI Inclusion Index (2018)
• UNESCO and UN Women Global Guidance on Addressing School-related Gender-based Violence (2016)
• Raising voices Good School Toolkit (2014)
• UNGEI A Whole School Approach to Prevent School-Related Gender-Based Violence: Minimum Standards and Monitoring Framework (2019)

Attawell, K. 2019. Behind the Numbers: Ending School Violence and Bullying. Paris: UNESCO.

Beadle, S.; Sujata, B. 2019. Ending School-related Gender-based Violence: A Series of Thematic Briefs. New York: United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI).

Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development; UNESCO. 2019. Child Online Safety: Minimizing the Risk of Violence, Abuse and Exploitation Online. Geneva: Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.

CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). 2020. An Initial Guide to Leveraging the Power of Social and Emotional Learning. Chicago: CASEL.

Cornu, C.; Yongfeng, L. 2019. Ending School Bullying: Focus on the Arab States. Paris: UNESCO.

Dunne, M.; Delprato, M.; Akyeampong, K. 2017. ‘How can learning surveys inform policies to close the learning gap due to bullying?’ IIEP Learning Portal (blog), 9 October 2017.

EducationLinks. 2018. ‘ Social and emotional learning in crisis and conflict settings’. Education in Crisis and Conflict (blog), 22 October 2108.

Global Education Monitoring Report team. 2020. A New Generation: 25 Years of Efforts for Gender Equality in Education. Paris: UNESCO.

Global Education Monitoring Report team; UNGEI (United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative). 2015. School-related gender-based violence is preventing the achievement of quality education for all. Policy Paper 17. Paris: UNESCO.

Global Education Monitoring Report team; UNGEI (United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative). 2017. Let’s decide how to measure school violence. Policy Paper 29. Paris: UNESCO.

Greene, M.E.; Robles, O.; Stout, K.; Suvilaakso, T.; Sussman, A.; Mandhane, R. 2013. A Girl’s Right to Learn Without Fear: Working to End Gender-based Violence at School. Woking: Plan International.

INEE (Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies). 2016. INEE Background Paper on Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional Learning for Children and Youth in Emergency Settings. New York: INEE.

INEE (Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies). 2019. Achieving SDG4 for Children and Youth Affected by Crisis. New York: INEE.

Mullis, I.V.S.; Martin, M.O.; Foy, P.; Kelly, D.L.; Fishbein, B. 2020. TIMSS 2019 International Results in Mathematics and Science. Boston: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2017. PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students’ Well-Being. Paris: PISA, OECD Publishing.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2019. PISA 2018 Results (Volume III): What School Life Means for Students’ Lives. Paris: PISA, OECD Publishing.

RTI International. 2013.  Literature review on the intersection of safe learning environments and educational achievement. Washington, DC: United States Agency for International Development.

Turner, E.; Hares, S. 2021. ‘Violence in schools is pervasive and teachers are often the perpetrators. Here are five ways to prevent it’.   CGD Blog (blog), 10 May.

UNESCO. 2016. Out in the Open: Education Sector Responses to Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity/Expression. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO. 2017. School Violence and Bullying: Global status report. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO Office Bangkok and Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific. 2016. Happy schools! A framework for learner well-being in the Asia-Pacific. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO Office Bangkok and Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific. 2017. Promoting learner happiness and well-being. UNESCO Asia-Pacific Education Thematic Brief. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO; French Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. 2020. International Conference on School Bullying: Recommendations by the Scientific Committee on preventing and addressing school bullying and cyberbullying. Paris: UNESCO.

UNESCO MGIEP (Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development). 2020. Rethinking Learning: A Review of Social and Emotional Learning for Education Systems. New Delhi:UNESCO MGIEP.

UNESCO; UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women). 2016. Global Guidance: School-related Gender-based Violence. Paris: UNESCO.

UNICEF; UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women); UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund); ILO (International Labour Organization); OSRSG/VAC (Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children). 2013. Breaking the Silence on Violence against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women. New York: UNICEF.

Yorke, L. Rose, P.; Bayley, S.; Wole Meshesha, D.; Ramchandani, P. 2021. The Importance of Students’ Socio-emotional Learning, Mental Health, and Wellbeing in the Time of COVID-19’. Oxford: Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE).

Related information

• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
• UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP)
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Healthy and Supportive School Environments

Time spent at school allows children to engage with peers and adults and develop skills to enhance their relationship experiences. Schools that have a clean and pleasant physical environment helps set the stage for positive, respectful relationships.

To create schools that support student health and learning, school leaders can work towards a healthy and supportive school environment. 1

A healthy and supportive school environment helps children and adolescents develop the skills they need to recognize and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, appreciate the perspectives of others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.

When school staff and families communicate, student health and learning can improve. Students can learn better in multiple settings as a result of these relationships—at home, in school, in out-of-school programs, and in the community.

Learn strategies to create a healthy and supportive school environment.

Learn ways to support skills for social and emotional development at home and at school.

• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). What is SEL? website.  https://casel.org/what-is-sel/external icon . Accessed March 17, 2020.

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Stanford-led study links school environment to brain development.

For decades, researchers have linked differences in school-age children’s brain development to their out-of-school environment, using indirect socioeconomic factors such as parental income and neighborhood characteristics. 

In a new paper , researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) demonstrate for the first time that, even when controlling for those other factors, there is a direct link between a child’s school environment and the development of their white matter, or the network of nerve fibers that allows different parts of the brain to communicate. 

In other words, schools that do better than average at promoting learning are showing greater year-by-year advances in brain development, even for students coming from a wide range of socioeconomic environments. 

For their study, the authors, including GSE doctoral candidate Ethan Roy , Professor Bruce McCandliss , and Associate Professor Jason Yeatman , leveraged data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, and the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), a national database of academic performance developed by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. 

Their findings show that children who attend higher-performing schools have accelerated white matter development, including in an area of the brain closely associated with reading skills.

Roy said the results, published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience on April 26, were “striking.”

“What jumped off the page for us is that, even when controlling for things like parental income, parental education, neighborhood context, and household conflict levels, we were still able to observe a significant relationship between the school environment of an individual and growth properties of their brain,” he said.

Filling a gap in learning science research

Yeatman, who along with McCandliss serves as an advisor to Roy, said the study is the first to show how variation in the educational opportunities afforded to children is related to brain development.

“Essentially, two children from similar families who are born on two sides of a school boundary have measurable differences in how their brains wire together,” said Yeatman, who holds a joint faculty appointment at the GSE and Stanford Medicine, is a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning , and directs the Brain Development & Education Lab and Rapid Online Assessment of Reading . 

The study looked at fractional anisotropy, a measure of how water moves through brain tissue and an indication of how insulated, or myelinated, a neuron’s axons are (higher myelination increases the speed of transmission between neurons and is associated with improved learning). The observational results show that fractional anisotropy is directly linked to a school’s national grade equivalence score, or a measure of how third graders from that school perform compared with the national average.

The paper fills a gap in learning science research. Although past studies have linked socioeconomic status to white matter development, they have not been able to focus in on specific attributes of a child’s development, such as the school they attend. Other research — including from Yeatman’s lab — has shown that educational interventions can lead to changes in white matter, but those have been relatively small-scale studies with participants who are not representative of the broader population. 

“This is one of the first cases where we can measure the thing we actually care about at the population level,” Yeatman said.

The authors also trained a deep learning model to conduct a global analysis of white matter, finding that children who attend schools with higher SEDA scores had brains that appeared developmentally “more mature” than their chronological age.

A measurable impact

The implications are “potentially game-changing,” said McCandliss, who directs the Stanford Educational Neuroscience Initiative (SENSI) and is a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. 

“National discussions of the importance of elementary school quality have never before been framed in terms of having a measurable impact on physical brain development of our young children,” he said. “I think this changes the frame of the discussion and decision-making around the impact of inequity.”

The study was only possible because of the comprehensive data included in the ABCD Study and SEDA, the researchers said. McCandliss, an investigator in the ABCD Study, first approached the ABCD team leaders about linking the SEDA data with the ABCD data in 2018, and his SENSI team spent about two years creating the resulting “crosswalk.” 

McCandliss called the ABCD study a “dream come true,” and the linked data a way to “finally” answer “elusive questions about how inequities in educational opportunities may actually be changing the course of physical and functional brain development during the vulnerable elementary school years across the nation.”

To analyze the brain white matter from the MRI data included in the ABCD study, the authors used pyAFQ , an open-source software developed by Yeatman’s lab. “It was a really fruitful collaboration across both labs,” Roy said.

The authors hope their methods and the newly linked ABCD and SEDA data, which is now freely available to a community of registered researchers around the world, will allow other scholars to pursue their own ideas and hypotheses at the intersection of education and neuroscience.

Yeatman said the methods and data used in the study will allow researchers to be more precise about environmental factors linked to brain development and the mechanisms behind those connections.

“The environment influences brain development,” he said. “That’s obvious. But what about the environment influences brain development? This is the first step in actually unraveling that specificity.”

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• School Education /

Essay on Cleanliness: Free Samples for School Students

• Updated on  
• Feb 22, 2024

Let us go green to get our planet clean ! Cleanliness refers to the state of being germ-free. Some of the everyday examples of cleanliness are brushing teeth, regular bathing and showering, brushing teeth, etc. Everyone knows the importance of cleanliness. It significantly contributes to personal hygiene, social interactions, self-esteem and confidence, etc. However, if you are told to write an essay on cleanliness, you must the importance of cleanliness, how it can contribute to a better life, and what would happen if we don’t follow the basis of personal hygiene and cleanliness practices. In this article, we will discuss samples of essay on cleanliness for students.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Cleanliness in 100 Words
• 2 Essay on Cleanliness in 200 Words
• 3 Essay on Cleanliness in 250 Words

Also Read: Types of Waste Management Disposal Methods in India

Essay on Cleanliness in 100 Words

As a student, we all have been taught that ‘cleanliness is health’s best friend.’ We must consider cleanliness as a fundamental aspect of life that protects us from harmful germs and dirt. It goes beyond the mere absence of dirt; it embodies a state of purity and order that fosters both physical and mental harmony.

Whether it pertains to personal hygiene , environmental sanitation, or societal upkeep, cleanliness plays a pivotal role in shaping our daily experiences and overall quality of life. We must develop habits like personal hygiene, ensure environmental sanitation, and advocate for societal cleanliness. This way we can create a world where individuals thrive, communities prosper, and societies flourish.

Also Read: Essay on Discipline

Essay on Cleanliness in 200 Words

Cleanliness is considered a gateway to health and happiness. The first step towards cleanliness is personal hygiene. Personal hygiene prevents the spread of diseases and fosters a positive self-image. We need to regularly wash our hands and take a bath. These are simple and effective measures that contribute to overall well-being. By instilling these habits from an early age, we can cultivate a strong foundation for a healthy lifestyle and build confidence in our daily interactions.

‘Spread love, not germs’

A broader concept of cleanliness is environmental cleanliness. To lead a germ-free life, we must keep our environment clean and maintain its safety. Waste material belongs to the dustbin, not on the streets. Regular cleaning and proper waste management not only prevent the proliferation of harmful pathogens but also create a conducive environment for growth and development. When communities collectively prioritize the cleanliness of their surroundings, they foster a sense of unity and shared responsibility, contributing to a vibrant and thriving society.

By investing in infrastructure and policies that prioritize cleanliness, communities can ensure the safety and prosperity of their members, fostering a sense of unity and collective responsibility for the greater good. 

Also Read: Epidemic VS Pandemic: How Are They Different?

Essay on Cleanliness in 250 Words

‘in public places, there are two types of dustbins: Green and Blue . The green dustbin belongs to wet waste and a blue dustbin is used for dry waste. In the blue-colour dustbin, only recyclable waste is dumped, for example, cardboard, magazines, food tin, plastic bottles, etc. These are some of the best basic steps towards cleanliness.

From personal hygiene to environmental safety, cleanliness is a broader concept. It encompasses a range of practices that are crucial for maintaining physical well-being, fostering environmental sustainability, and promoting social harmony. From personal hygiene to environmental sanitation, cleanliness plays a pivotal role in shaping our daily lives and overall societal development.

We all must set our personal hygiene goals, starting with regular handwashing, and proper grooming. To prevent the spread of contagious diseases and contribute to a positive self-image and mental well-being, we must follow personal hygiene practices. When we cultivate habits of personal cleanliness, we not only protect ourselves but also create a safer and more hygienic environment for people around us.

Environmental cleanliness is another step towards cleanliness, as it is vital for the sustainability of Earth. Implementing practices like proper waste management, recycling practices, and pollution control measures are essential for preserving the natural environment and reducing the detrimental impact of human activities. 

Achieving environmental cleanliness requires collective efforts from communities. Collectively, we can contribute to the preservation of natural resources and the mitigation of environmental degradation, fostering a healthier and more sustainable ecosystem for future generations.’

Ans: Cleanliness refers to the state of being free from dirt, germs, and unwanted matter. It is a term that encompasses personal hygiene, environmental sanitation, and overall tidiness. Cleanliness is crucial for maintaining good health and preventing the spread of diseases.

Ans: To raise awareness about cleanliness, you can conduct educational campaigns, such as workshops, seminars, and educational campaigns in schools and workplaces; use social media platforms to share informative posts and videos; Organize community clean-up drives and encourage active participation; Collaborate with local authorities and organizations to implement effective waste management.

Ans: Cleanliness refers to the habit of keeping yourself and your surroundings clean. Everyone must follow this important hygiene rule.

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Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

• handwriting

The Shenandoah County School Board’s Terrible History Lesson

O n May 10, 2024, 161 years to the day after General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s last breath fighting for the Confederate insurrection intended to continue enslavement of human beings in America, the Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to restore his name on a high school in rural Virginia.

More than 50 concerned community members, students, and parents, including one of the first African Americans to integrate Stonewall Jackson High School in 1963, and hundreds of their supporters, continued to advocate a new reckoning of the county’s heritage of enslavement, segregation, and racial injustice. They affirmed the names a community committee selected in 2021 renaming the school as Mountain View High and another school named after Confederate generals Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee as Honey Run Elementary.

But the school board heard none of it. Instead, the board sided with those idolizing the faith and loyalty of “heroes” like Jackson, condemning pandemic-related processes that did not take into account the voices of “we the people,” and complaining about “woke outsiders.” At the end of the board meeting, the board had delivered a disgraceful new chapter in our community’s history and a terrible lesson for the children they are sworn to educate.

Historians will debate the consequences of the board’s vote and perhaps whether the nation’s current political mood has rekindled racial tensions. But the school board members and their embittered supporters made it clear that the shadows of our segregated past still loom large.

For context, we should look at 2020, particularly the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video that emblazoned the truth of racial injustice in America. After George Floyd’s murder by police in May of that year, national, state, and local leaders across the nation took up resolutions against racism, including Shenandoah County’s Board of Supervisors and the county School Board.

At around the same time in our mountain-cradled county, another incident reminded us of America’s lingering racial unrest: an encounter between a white mob and a black pastor in Edinburg, Va. On June 1, 2020, Pastor McCray approached a couple illegally dumping a refrigerator on his property, asking them to leave. They left, returned with three more people and began “attacking him physically, saying ‘they don’t give a darn’ about ‘my black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff,’ and telling him they would ‘kill’ him,” according to Associated Press reports. McCray put distance between himself and the mob by brandishing a gun that he was legally licensed to carry. When the police arrived, they arrested the Black man with the gun.

The Shenandoah County Sheriff later apologized for the incident, but it reinforces the need for formal resolutions against racism and leaders willing to make difficult decisions for a more inclusive community. The Shenandoah County School Board at the time agreed. They chose action, encouraged by then-Department of Education secretary Atif Qarni and then-Governor Ralph Northam, both of whom supported statewide removal of Confederate leaders’ names of public schools.

The 2020 school board, tying in as the next step to its June “Resolution condemning racism and affirming the division’s commitment to an inclusive school environment for all,” retired the names of Confederate leaders, and developed a process for community and student input into choosing more unifying public school names. On September 10, 2020, the then school board reaffirmed the foregoing motion, as well as moving forward with renaming the schools on southern campus. Community committees met during the next three months, with new names chosen at the January 14, 2021 meeting, after seven months of public input.

By 2024, recently elected school board members focused their arguments for restoration on the former board’s “secret” process during the COVID “plan-demic,” stating that community input was not taken into account at the time. Two years before, three current school board members ran on a campaign to restore the school’s Confederate leader names, an attempt that ended at the June 9, 2022 school board meeting with a 3-3 stalemate. The current board consists of three more new school board members, elected in the fall of 2023. Like many school boards around the nation, ours has committed to reversing civil rights often under the lost-cause banner of Confederate pride.

The memory of Stonewall Jackson High School as a whites-only public institution until its integration in 1963 is not a distant echo of history but an agonizing experience for many Black residents of Shenandoah County. These individuals are not just statistics in history books; they are our neighbors, friends, and family—and they were intentionally harmed in Shenandoah County as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s.

Read More: Confederate Monuments and Other Disputed Memorials Have Come Down in Cities Across America. What Should Take Their Place?

And now again in 2024. Dozens of citizens, alum, parents, and current students of the schools addressed the board, offering poignant testimony about lived experiences with institutionalized discrimination or in support of others who had. Approximately two-thirds of the speakers opposed back-naming the schools. For them, returning to Confederate leader names makes the damage linger.

Aliyah Ogle, a student who represented her school in three sports this year and would be attending the renamed high school next year, said it best: “I'm a black student and if the name is restored, I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I'm disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe, which is that we should all be treated equally, and that slavery was a cruel and awful thing.”

Most of the board members could not have cared less about the county’s 252 year history. They were more concerned for judging the 2020 school board’s actions and recognizing the Confederate heritage of the county. Their brand of leadership consisted of telling the people they represent that we all have problems of one kind or another; it’s time to move on. “War is hell,” said Dennis Barlow, chairman of the Shenandoah County School Board. They were joined by two dozen pro-Confederacy speakers, claiming there is no evident racism in Shenandoah County, and never has been.

Board member Tom Streett used his decision to discuss pro-slavery General Jackson. “When you read about this man — who he was, what he stood for, his character, his loyalty, his leadership, how Godly a man he was — those standards that he had were much higher than any leadership of the school system in 2020,” Streett said.

Streett, however, neglected to mention that even Jackson’s descendants have weighed in on this legacy issue. For the past seven years, the general’s great-great grandsons, William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian, have said they support removing Confederate statues and other monuments—including in Shenandoah County this week—as “part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought.” They added that they were “ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer.”

Yet Shenandoah County’s school board and its grievance agenda does nothing to provide historical context, advance dialogue, or heal the feelings of well-meaning citizens. Using the same policy the 2021 school board used to name Mountain View and Honey Run, the 2024 board defiantly focused on undoing the decision and giving voice to the people they wanted to hear. The decision unfairly places our children as pawns on a rhetorical battlefield, keeping the board’s focus on vengeance and political control—not due process or heritage. But it’s more dangerous than just talk and hard feelings: The county remains on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center , which tracks white supremacists, including ongoing activity by the Patriot Front. To address this reality, we need better, sensible leadership from our school board. But for now, we must live with a stark reminder that elections have consequences.

Looking ahead, the many good people of our county will strive to ensure that our complete history, good and bad, remains available to students and the public. We must find a way to truly honor our whole heritage without insisting that students salute pro-slavery traitors or the treatment of their ancestors as subhuman property for almost 400 years.

If the U.S. Department of Defense can rename military bases once emblazoned with Confederate leaders’ names, then our public schools can do the same. After all, these are the spaces where the first lessons of civic duties are learned. History is complicated, no doubt, but there’s no better place to examine complex issues than in a good school. Other nations and communities reckon with difficult pasts. In Germany, for example, students still learn about Adolf Hitler, but they are not forced to wear sports jerseys and school-pride t-shirts that glorify symbols or names associated with murderous war crimes.

Our fight for what’s right in Shenandoah County is not over. We will continue to oppose historical injustices and help all constituencies in our community learn from the lessons of our past. As it has throughout our nation’s history, the work of decent people striving for a better, more united America will go on. We hope the school board here can find a way to join us along the way.

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Class of 2024: “You Will Be Leaders for Change”

The Class of 2024 celebrated their accomplishments at commencement ceremonies held at Old Campus and Kroon Courtyard on May 20. The 156 graduates are headed to positions at NGOs, corporations, governments, and academic institutions across the U.S. and the globe. 

Commencement 2024 Video and News Hub

Full coverage of Commencement 2024, including the highlights video, photo gallery, graduate spotlights, and the YSE ceremony livestream video.

They include 10 PhDs, 95 Master of Environmental Management, 33 Master of Environmental Science, 12 Master of Forestry, 5 Master of Forest Science, and 27 graduates receiving joint degrees. Members of the Class of 2024 who earned doctoral degrees have accepted positions in a wide array of organizations and academic institutions including the World Resources Institute, a faculty position at the New York Botanical Garden; and postdoctoral fellowships at Brown, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and University of California, Berkeley, among others. 

Many master’s graduates will be headed into doctoral degree programs, while others have accepted roles in a variety of environmental professions and sectors, including as an extension forester at Oregon State university; Environmental Law Fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Fund; chief policy advisor at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; Fulbright Public Policy Fellow in Bogotá, Colombia; and senior environmental specialist at Korea Export-Import Bank. 

“You will be leaders for change, and soon,” Dean Indy Burke told the graduates, who come from more than 20 U.S. states and 25 countries, during YSE’s 123 rd commencement ceremony. “The sheer enormity of the capital you represent in intellect, knowledge, creativity, passion, energy, resourcefulness, and support for one another is immeasurable… In sum, we are collectively launching one of the world’s most powerful forces of environmental leadership into career paths across the planet.” 

At the start of the day, YSE graduates took part in Yale’s 323 rd commencement ceremony at historic Old Campus where they were joined by more than 4,400 graduates from across the university.  

The students then returned to Kroon Courtyard for a diploma ceremony under the tent that included the conferral of degrees, an awards presentation, a musical performance by the LoggerRhythms, addresses by class speakers, and a pinning ceremony led by Alumni Association Board President Anne Peters ’76 MFS, who noted that the graduates are joining the more than 5,700 YSE alumni who are making an impact in the world. The ceremony was followed by a luncheon reception with family and friends. 

Our generation will be the first who begin repairing this relationship with their land … We will step out of this place, and our community will change the course of history.”

The class speakers thanked their fellow classmates for their support and commitment to environmental and social justice and urged them to bring their energy into the world to  advance change. 

Manon Lefèvre, who received her doctorate in philosophy and who has accepted a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed to the historic moment in 1894 when the first women received their doctorates at Yale. Now, 130 years later, in 2024, the YSE doctoral graduates are all women, she noted. 

“Institutions, we know, are not built to change. They will not save us. In those moments in which they fail, our friendships do remain. In my time at Yale, my friends have organized together on climate action, endowment divestment, migrant protections, police disarmament, and a graduate student union, which we won,” Lefèvre said. “My hope for all of us is that we continue to cultivate the transformative friendships we have made here with care, and to remember the change-making power. 

Jane Jacoby ’24 MF/JD discussed the power of democracy and the importance of participation. Describing YSE as a “polis” (an ancient Greek city-state), she called on the class to think of the ballot box when addressing the myriad of environmental challenges. 

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“Like any moment of transition, commencements are funny things. Both endings and beginnings, they offer us a moment to reflect, while inviting us to imagine the future. How can we bring the best parts of this polis with us after today? That word, polis, hints at one answer: politics,” Jacoby said. “When you hear the word environment, you might picture our planet's majestic landscapes, or the great challenges we face, from plastic pollution to war. You might not picture a ballot box. I've heard many at YSE profess a kind of political nihilism, abandoning democratic change as a lost cause …But there are solutions. We have to stop treating political topics as something repulsive because true democracy thrives on the engagement of its citizens. And thanks to YSE, we can bring something more. Hope. …I'm asking each of you to carry that hope with you. Plant seeds with it wherever you land next.” 

Jimena Terrazas Lozano ’24 MESc referenced the Mexican Indigenous community’s battles against colonialism and the importance of land in identity. 

“Land represents one of the most powerful ties we have to our ancestors and those who will come after us. She keeps our stories and tells them to future generations,” she said. “Today, we are here because we share that in common. We and the land are inextricable, and we know that everything is an environmental issue. Poverty, inequality, and even more are all environmental issues. We believe in honoring that kinship we have with nature. Our generation will be the first who begin repairing this relationship with their land … We will step out of this place, and our community will change the course of history.” 

While enjoying the post-commencement reception in Kroon Courtyard, Elizabeth Nowlin ’24 MESc reflected on all the hard work that went into earning her degree, and the support she received from her family and the YSE community. Her regalia included cords representing environmental equity, military and veterans, LGBTQ+, and domestic students of color. 

“I think I am going to remember most the people who've really uplifted me and motivated me to keep going and highlighting the importance of seeing women of color in these spaces,” Nowlin said. “And I know that it's an achievement beyond just myself, an achievement for the communities of different people that I represent. It's a win for all of us.”  

Class of ’24 Profiles

YSE Class of ’24: Jane Jacoby Is at Home at the Intersection of Environmental Law and Justice

YSE Class of ’24: Aishwarya Iyer Focuses on Underrepresented Voices in Energy Usage

YSE Class of ’24: Sangam Paudel Seeks to Balance Conservation with Economic Needs

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• 21 May 2024

IFC India: From Trash to Treasure: Inside a Waste Management Site in Mumbai

Professor Vikram Gandhi’s Immersive Field Course (IFC) “Development while Decarbonizing: India’s Path to Net-Zero" delved into the critical aspect of decarbonization and sustainability goals amid India's rapid development. The course presented an opportunity for students to advance their knowledge of sustainability efforts, decarbonization, and net zero in the context of a broader development agenda. The class culminated in a series of site visits in January 2024 in Mumbai and Bangalore and this is one of 14 student essays that highlights their reflections on uncovering sustainable solutions across the country.

The climate movement can sometimes feel like a distant battleground centered around vast and technical challenges like the energy transition. While critical, these issues can seem abstract and removed from our everyday lives. Waste, however, is an unavoidable crisis staring us right in the face. From overflowing landfills to choked waterways, the consequences of mounting landfills are impossible to ignore. This is why visiting Dalmia Polypro’s Dry Waste Facility in Mumbai during our IFC course was a revelation. A partnership initiative with Hindustan Unilever (HUL), this waste management plant is a fascinating case study of how the right capital, players, and process can tackle the waste crisis.

Hindustan Unilever, like other FMCG manufacturers, has historically faced criticism for its reliance on single-use plastics. The organization has recently made advancements to its role in the crisis, bringing forward investments, commitments, and partnerships that steer the industry toward a greener future. Among these include a $1 million early commitment to help build Dalmia Polypro’s material recovery facilities in Mumbai, such as the one we visited. These centers segregate, sort, and dry waste - including paper, glass, metal, and plastic - to send to a recycling facility that generates cleaned pellets repurposed for lower grade use.

1) Importance of Public-Private partnerships in solving the waste problem: Innovation in India requires coordination between private and public players, with an understanding of the various dynamics that exist at state, regional, and community levels. Each stakeholder has a role to play here. The government’s recent EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) guidelines mandate that corporations like HUL play a role in managing its plastic waste. HUL brings patient capital and credibility to the project, alongside a reliable buyer of recycled plastic outputs that instill a sustainable edge to the project. Dalmia, an earlier stage company in the ecosystem, brings the infrastructure and expertise to process the waste. Lastly, waste pickers and sorters are employed from within the community to operate each plant , and nonprofit organizations aid in the underlying behavioral changes required to effectively collect more waste. Without the government’s regulatory framework, HUL’s investment and trust-building, Dalmia’s infrastructure, and the community’s willingness to help collect waste, this endeavor would not be possible. The initiative’s early successes have helped Dalmia scale: the US DFC committed $30 million in October of 2023 to help build a larger plastic waste facility (2). This exemplifies the kind of collaborative action needed to address the plastic crisis at scale.

2) A case for capitalism in advancing green efforts: Studying Mumbai’s waste management processes quickly uncovers the massive informal economy making this possible. Mumbai employs approximately 300,000 individual waste pickers who cover unofficial territories and waste types across the city. They operate within urban centers and landfills to collect waste, sort out the plastic, and help\ aggregate them for larger materials processing facilities like HUL and Dalmia’s plant. This fragile ecosystem is supported by effective supply and demand. Because there are entities like Dalmia Polypro setting a price for raw untreated plastic, and buyers like Hindustan Unilever committed to buying the processed recycled plastic, individual wage workers are supplying their inputs. Independent waste pickers make roughly 150 rupees a day collecting plastic, and workers in the plant make 400-500 rupees a day to sort and process for recycling. The market is in turn willing to pay roughly 100 rupees for each recycled pellet generated, helping create the entire value chain from individual waste picker, processing plant, pellet manufacturer, and ultimately the goods manufacturer using recycled pellets. A visit to Dharavi in Mumbai, one of the world’s largest informal housing communities, demonstrated how markets can be an effective lever for waste management in a huge way. We crossed a tiny recycling business, operating out of shop corner, which buys used carboard boxes from a waste picker who collects them from local households. The business in turn cleans and strips the boxes down to resell them to local businesses who use them informally as transportation and stock storage. Alternatively, these boxes may end up in landfills. This is the power of setting effective supply and demand: entrepreneurs, at every level, can rise to the challenge. It is up to entities like Dalmia and HUL to adopt, incorporate, and scale these efforts without leaving anyone behind.

3) Scaling won’t be easy, and the challenges are many: While our visit to the processing facility reinvigorated our optimism in what’s possible, it also unearthed the sheer number of challenges public and private players will need to address to scale the solution. On the consumer side, it was clear from the mountains of discarded sachets that education and behavioral change must lead the effort. Ultimately, recycling should be a secondary goal to reduction. Private players must make recycling their products easier, and bottoms-up initiatives can help train households on managing and sorting their own waste. Encouraging responsible consumption, promoting waste segregation at source, and investing in biodegradable alternatives are vital steps toward a circular economy. On Dalmia and HUL’s side, scaling the current plastic processing facilities requires significant investment and reliable long-term contracts for the increase in recycled outputs. Today’s policy framework and private player commitments don’t yet make that possible.

Leaving the Dalmia facility, we were left with a sense of both hope and responsibility. There is a vision for a future where waste is not a burden but a valuable resource that feeds our production and sparks stronger livelihoods. Responsibility, knowing that we have a role to play in shaping toward that future.

1. Pinto, Richa, “72.60% of Mumbai’s Daily Waste is Food Waste, Shows BMC Environmental Report”, Times of India, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/72 -60-of-mumbais-daily-waste-is-food-waste-shows-bmc-environmentreport/articleshow/104436106.cms?from=mdr, Oct 15 2023

2. Press Trust of India, “Dalmia Polypro to raise $30mn from US DFC to build facility in Maha”, Business Standard, https://www.business-standard.com/comp anies/news/d almia-polyp ro-to-raise-30-mn-from-u s-dfc-to-build-facilityin-maha-123101800434_1.html, Oct 18 2023

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Scorching schoolyards: California groups want more trees, less asphalt at schools

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Too few trees at California’s schools mean there’s little protecting students from a warming planet. Here’s how advocates say the state can pay for more shade.

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Schoolyards are hot and getting hotter, but only a tiny fraction of California’s grade school students can play in the shade.

Researchers and advocates are pushing the state to allocate money for green schoolyards , which can include trees, grass or gardens in place of the flat asphalt or rubber play surfaces at most schools. 

With the help of more than $121 million in state grants, 164 schools already are on their way to either designing or building green schoolyards. Many more applied for the school greening grants, with requests totaling more than $350 million for projects they hoped to build.

The high applicant numbers highlight growing demand for greenery at schools as the climate gets hotter. But with California’s Green Schoolyards program depleted and a state general budget deficit of $56 billion over the next two fiscal years, where will the money for green school projects come from? 

Some environmental groups are pushing for a proposed climate bond that would include $350 million for the green schoolyards program. They also are pushing for a $1 billion carve-out in a proposed $14-$15 billion school infrastructure bond that could go before voters this November.

“It is well known that our K-12 schoolyards, play structures and campuses are among the most dangerous climate liabilities currently facing the state — principally due to the deadly heat and flood potential our kids are being exposed to now,” environment groups wrote in a letter to authors of two school infrastructure bond proposals, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi , a Democrat from Torrance, and state Sen. Steve Glazer , a Democrat from Orinda.

Muratsuchi told CalMatters he is reluctant to dictate how schools should use bond money. 

“I’m aware of their request, but we have many other requests to consider,” he said, such as funds for heating and air conditioning systems and solar energy on campuses. “But those priorities will be defined by local school districts.”

Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story.

Steven Glazer

Democrat, State Senate, District 7 (Orinda)

Al Muratsuchi

Democrat, State Assembly, District 66 (Torrance)

Students need outdoor shade

On a typical 90-degree day under full sun, grass can reach 95 degrees, while asphalt can hit 150  and rubber surfaced play areas can reach 165 degrees, according to research by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. 

Forget 90 degrees; other research predicts much of the country is on track for more than double the usual number of 100-degree days by midcentury. Fresno already averages 33 days of 100+ degrees each year, Sacramento has 19 and Riverside has 14, federal weather data shows . 

Unrelenting sun and high heat are bad for kids, the Luskin Center says: “Playing outside in the heat can lead to dehydration, headaches, heat stroke and other health impacts.” 

Shade from trees is one of the best ways to cool things down, the researchers said, because it can reduce heat exposure to children by as much as 70 degrees . 

But most of California’s schools lack tree canopy, and the trees that do exist on campuses are often around the perimeter, where students can’t access their shade during recess. 

Green Schoolyards America, a nonprofit dedicated to building more green space on campuses, recently conducted a study of the tree canopy shading the state’s more than 10,000 public schools. 

It found that an average of 6.4% of the school areas students access are covered by tree shade. More than 2.5 million students attend schools with less than 5% tree canopy in student areas.

That’s a far cry from what urban forestry and climate experts recommend. They say there needs to be enough trees to cover 30% of every city . Driven by that goal, Green Schoolyards America is pushing for ways to plant trees to cover at least 30% of each school area used by children during the day. 

So far only 29,452 California students have that level of tree canopy, out of nearly 6 million students. 

“This is a long-term infrastructure problem,” said Sharon Gamson Danks, chief executive of Green Schoolyards America. 

 “It’s not building a little garden in the corner. It’s actual infrastructure, on par with highway building. It’s an investment, and we want children to not be overlooked in preparing for climate and protecting their health.”

Most greening projects on school campuses include more trees, but they can also include mulch, grassy fields to replace asphalt, and wooden play and learning structures, said Šárka Volejníková, the Trust for Public Land’s program director for Bay Area parks. 

The difference green space makes

At the César E. Chávez Education Center in Oakland, students — many from low income families — used to play on a yard that was 90% asphalt. The school is surrounded by freeways and industrial factories, and students suffer with high asthma rates, said Eleanor Marsh, the school’s former principal. 

“In lower income areas the schools have more concrete,” Marsh said. “That is just the reality. And in higher income areas, kids have more natural play structures that have been fundraised for by PTA’s. It becomes an equity issue around mental health and access to core academics.” 

The school received a $1.2 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency’s Urban Greening program and worked with the Trust for Public Land in 2020 to completely renovate the schoolyard, adding more greenery, trees and play structures that would be cooler and more academically enriching. 

Students were part of the process, taking the temperature of the asphalt and rubber playground and recommending alternatives. 

Now students take outdoor gardening classes and play and run through their new “river” made with bricks, which doubles as a stormwater runoff system on rainy days. 

There’s no lack of enthusiasm for greening projects among educators, said Marsh, now principal at San Pedro Elementary School in San Rafael. 

“Every public school in California is up against huge budget cuts,” she said. “There is no money at the school site level to improve the physical space for students. So we are really relying on support from the state.” 

Where the money could come from 

The time to dedicate more funding to green schoolyards is now, said Manny Gonez, director of policy initiatives for the Beverly Hills environmental group TreePeople.

The latest proposals for a climate bond, which would be paid off over many years, includes an ask for $150 million for an urban greening grant, which doesn’t exclusively fund school greening programs but has in the past. TreePeople also supports the request for $1 billion in the proposed school infrastructure bond. 

“Ultimately the priorities for school facilities funding should be driven by educators and not by the environmental lobby.” Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi , Democrat from Torrance

Traditionally school bonds are for new school construction or renovation. School districts can apply for the state bond funds for projects and must provide local matching funds. There is money set aside for financially strapped districts that can’t provide as much of a local match. 

“This is a small down payment to really scale up the work that the state has been doing with these 164 schools,” Gonez said, referring to schools that already have green schoolyard grants.

The Trust for Public Land wants money set aside for green schoolyard projects and for the most needy schools to get priority, said Juan Altamirano, the group’s director of government affairs.

Earmarking the funds in the proposed school bond would boost support for the measure overall, Altamirano said. California voters — even those without children — support more green schoolyards, an April survey of 800 voters by the Trust for Public Land showed.  

Some legislators were noncommittal when discussing the request. 

Muratsuchi said he has been an environmental champion in the Legislature and understands the need for more green school funding. But in this case, it’s not up to him to define that as a priority in the school infrastructure bond. 

“Ultimately the priorities for school facilities funding should be driven by educators and not by the environmental lobby,” he said.

Glazer denied Calmatters’ request for an interview, saying he is not directly involved in the decision making of this issue. 

California already has committed to increasing the tree canopy on schoolyards on paper, but how that will happen is unclear.

In the state’s Nature-Based Solutions Climate Targets published in April, officials said the state would prioritize greening schoolyards through its School Facility Program , “ensuring greening schoolyards is not just a consideration but an integral expectation when local educational agencies undertake new school construction projects and modernization projects.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not answer questions about plans to fund greening school projects. Alex Stack, a Newsom spokesperson, said “No other governor has done as much as Gov. Newsom to protect people from extreme heat .” 

Stacks said the green schoolyard grants already allocated are part of Newsom’s 2022 Extreme Heat Action Plan , funded by $52.3 billion in the California Climate Commitment budget. 

Newsom cut the climate budget , and other parts of the budget, by more than 7% in his May revised proposal. 

What drives California’s budget decisions? A lot of politics, not as much data

Once it was hailed as a drought fix — but now California’s moving to restrict synthetic turf over health concerns

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Alejandra Reyes-Velarde California Divide Reporter

Alejandra Reyes-Velarde is a California Divide reporter writing about policy and poverty from Los Angeles. She specializes in social mobility, labor issues, access to technology, immigration and more.... More by Alejandra Reyes-Velarde

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Ballarat Clarendon College stirs social media debate with trial ban of water bottles in classes

A prestigious school in regional Victoria has banned water bottles in the classroom.

Ballarat Clarendon College says it is conducting a "water trial" for years 5 to 9, which requires students to leave their drink bottles outside the classroom during lessons. 

"Early feedback results indicate improved classroom climate, student learning and concentration due to reduced noise and fewer rest room breaks," a school spokesperson said in a statement. 

The school said the trial would run during the colder months and it remained "open-minded" about its benefits and impact. 

Varying views about ban

The change has sparked extensive conversation on social media.

One anonymous "outraged" student said the decision "jeopardised" students' rights and they felt the school was not focused on student wellbeing. 

A Ballarat Clarendon College spokesperson said in a statement it was continually exploring ways to support students' learning and wellbeing in the classroom. 

A long thread of other comments ranged from concerns about the fairness of restricting student access to water to teachers who said they had seen how water bottles had become a distraction in the classroom. 

One anonymous middle school teacher said they had experienced students playing with their bottles, squirting water on other students, and using drinking to disrupt conversations.

Another teacher said they had witnessed students throwing water bottles at each other and flipping their bottles during class time. 

Former teacher Terry Lockwood told ABC Statewide Mornings he had students put their water bottles on a table in the front of the classroom to prevent distraction when he was teaching. 

"If they needed it they would come up and have a little sip," he said. 

"I found most kids forgot it was there. They would go through the class and quite often I had to remind them to take them as they left.

"That way those who really want to maintain their civil right by having water could do so and the rest got by." 

Other people have posted they don't remember having a water bottle in class while they were at school in decades past. 

Reducing distractions 

Ballarat Clarendon College's head of middle school, Shaune Moloney, said there were no particular incidents that sparked the ban, but it was designed to minimise distractions and help students develop "self-regulation" skills. 

"The use of water bottles in and around the classroom is something we think students need support managing," he said.

"It is the size of the water bottles, the noise, the constant clunking in class, but not only that, it is the physical act of carrying a somewhat cumbersome bottle with the school books.

"Sometimes things get left behind. It might be a piece of equipment or an item they need for class rather than the water bottle.

Mr Moloney said the trial started this week and would likely continue for the remainder of the term. 

Under the trial, students are allowed to bring water bottles to active classes including sport and dance, but not "sedentary" classes like maths.  

"When I spoke to the students about it, I encouraged students to speak to me if they felt they needed their water bottle for a particular reason," he said. 

"A few students have and they are permitted to take theirs, but on the whole, they have responded positively.

"I want to stress that no student at Clarendon will go thirsty." 

Department supports water bottles

The ABC understands the Department of Education does not have a specific policy on water bottles in classrooms. 

But recommendations under its heat health policy encourage students to drink water often and "take a water bottle with you always". 

Department of Education Policy only applies to government schools, not independent schools like Ballarat Clarendon College. 

Some schools, including Flemington Primary School, ask for students to have a drink bottle available to them every day.

"These may be refilled with cold water during the day and students are allowed to have them on their tables or in a convenient location in class," Flemington Primary School's website states.

Nutritionist says 'unnecessary' to drink water frequently

Public health nutritionist and dietician Rosemary Stanton told ABC Statewide Mornings the idea that people had to drink water every few minutes was "crazy".

She said students could quench their thirst before coming into class and it wouldn't matter if they had to wait an hour to drink if they became thirsty. 

"I think this is a bit of a trend that people have to walk around with a water bottle. We see it all the time," Dr Stanton said. 

"It is unnecessary and disruptive.

"I know the water bottles have become a bit of a status symbol, so kids are competing to see who has the in and trendy water bottle."

High-ranked school

Ballarat Clarendon College is one of Victoria's top-ranking schools. 

It was named Victoria's top VCE performer for the second consecutive year in 2023, with a median VCE study score of 39 out of a maximum of 50. 

This year, tuition fees for years 11 and 12 are more than $22,400.

The school made headlines last year when a teacher resigned after her expletive-filled rant to students was captured in a class recording and shared widely on social media.

At the time, the Independent Education Union questioned the school's policy on recording lessons.

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See NY school districts ranked from 1 to 637 based on latest living environment Regents exams

• Updated: May. 22, 2024, 8:01 a.m. |
• Published: May. 22, 2024, 8:00 a.m.

Stock photo (Klaus Vedfelt | Getty Images) Klaus Vedfelt | Getty Images

• Kevin Tampone | [email protected]

A total of 47 school districts in New York saw 95% or more of their students test proficient on the living environment Regents exams during the 2022-2023 school year, according to state data.

Ten districts statewide had 100% of their students test proficient.

The state Education Department released Regents results for the 2022-2023 school year in December.

In Onondaga County, the top-scoring districts were:

• Fayetteville-Manlius (97% proficient, tied for No. 21 statewide)
• Marcellus (95% proficient, tied for No. 38 statewide)
• Jamesville-DeWitt (94%, tied for No. 48 statewide)

The Syracuse City School District had 39% of its student test proficient on the living environment Regents exam last year. That was tied for No. 626 in the state, tied with Buffalo, ahead of Rochester and behind Albany.

You can see all of the school district-level statewide data on living environment Regents exams in the table below. If you can’t see the table, click here to open it in a new window .

You can search by entering a complete or partial district or county name in the search box. You can also click on the column headers to sort the table as you like.

Only districts with reported results are included in the database. The state does not report proficiency scores publicly if a district’s sample size is too small.

Students are considered proficient on Regents exams if they score at level three or above.

More school data

• Search rates of chronic absenteeism in CNY high schools for 2022-2023 school year
• 1 Central NY high school had 100% graduation rate in 2023: See rankings
• NY school districts ranked 1 to 662 based on 2023 graduation rates
• Central NY schools ranked 1 to 71 on latest geometry Regents exams
• Central NY schools ranked 1 to 67 based on 2023 Algebra II Regents exams

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598

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Essay on Save Environment for Students and Children

500+ words essay on globalization.

Environment refers to the natural surroundings and conditions in which we live. Unfortunately, this Environment has come under serious threat. This threat is almost entirely due to human activities. These human activities have certainly caused serious damage to the Environment. Most noteworthy, this damage risks the survival of living things on Earth. Therefore, there is an urgent need to save the Environment.

Ways of Saving Environment

First of all, planting trees should be given massive attention. Above all, a tree is the source of oxygen. Unfortunately, due to construction, many trees have been cut down. This certainly reduces the amount of oxygen in the environment. Growing more trees means more oxygen. Hence, growing more trees would mean better life quality.

Similarly, people must give attention to forest conservation. Forests are vital for the Environment. However, deforestation certainly reduces the area of forests around the World. The government must launch programs to conserve the forests. The government must make harming forests a criminal offense.

Soil conservation is yet another important way to save the Environment. For this, there must be control of landslides, floods, and soil erosion . Furthermore, there should also be afforestation and tree plantation to conserve the soil. Also, terrace farming and using natural fertilizers are some more ways.

Waste management is a powerful way of protecting the environment. There must be proper disposal of wastes. Most noteworthy, this would help to keep the surroundings healthy. The government must ensure to clean the streets and other polluted land areas. Furthermore, there should be toilets in every house. Also, the government must provide enough public toilets.

Pollution is probably the biggest danger to the Environment. Smoke, dust, and harmful gases cause air pollution. These causes of air pollution come from industries and vehicles mostly. Furthermore, Chemicals and pesticides cause land and water pollution.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Saving Environment

First of all, the world climate will remain normal. Harming the Environment and causing pollution have caused global warming. Due to this many humans and animals have died. Hence, saving the environment would reduce global warming .

The health of people would improve. Due to pollution and deforestation, the health of many people is poor. Conserving the Environment would certainly improve the health of people. Most noteworthy, saving Environment would reduce many diseases.

Saving Environment would certainly protect the animals. Extinction of many species will not take place due to saving Environment. Many endangered species would also increase in population.

The water level would rise. Damage to Environment has severely reduced the level of groundwater. Furthermore, there is a scarcity of clean drinking water around the World. Due to this, many people fell ill and die. Saving Environment would certainly avoid such problems.

In conclusion, Environment is a precious gift on this planet. Our Environment is facing a big danger. Saving Environment is the need of the hour. Probably, it is the biggest concern of Humanity right now. Any delay in this regard could be disastrous.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Name any two ways for soil conservation?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “First of all, the ways for soil conservation are many. Two of them are afforestation and using natural fertilizers.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “How world climate would become normal because of saving the Environment?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”Saving Environment would certainly make the world climate normal. This is because there would a reduction of global warming.”} }] }

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News from the Columbia Climate School

Scope 3 Carbon Emissions and the Management of Supply Chains

Steve Cohen

When measuring and managing an organization’s production of pollution, it is not enough to reduce the emissions you produce directly, you must also reduce the pollution created by your suppliers. In the language of greenhouse gas pollution, these are called Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 emissions are those directly caused by your organization, for example, the emissions from motor vehicles owned by your organization. Scope 2 emissions are those emissions caused indirectly, for example, by the utility that supplies your electricity. Scope 3 emissions are emissions from the organizations you contract with for services or supplies. A growing area of my study of organizations has been an effort to understand the management of organizations and people who are not under direct hierarchical control. Organizational production was once typically a function of vertically integrated hierarchies, however, today, it is a function of networks of organizations, sometimes called supply chains or supply webs. Supply chain and contractor management is different and, in some ways, more difficult than internal organizational management.

Back in 2008, Bill Eimicke and I wrote The Responsible Contract Manager, which was published by Georgetown University Press and focused on government contracting. In our more recent book, Management Fundamentals, published by Columbia University Press, we devoted a chapter to outsourcing in private, nonprofit, and government organizations. In both books, we observed that most managers underestimate the difficulty, complexity, and importance of managing contractors. One management element that is difficult to extend into contracted organizations is an organization’s performance measurement system. In Management Fundamentals , we observed that:

“Organizational networks and sophisticated, resilient supply chains are already part of most organizations, and their growth in coming years is easy to project. Obstacles to contracting and extending supply chains can and will be overcome. These changes will lead to an increased demand for contract management skills… We expect to see an extension of performance management systems from contracting organizations to their vendors . [emphasis added] Ultimately, skill and experience at managing contractors will likely become part of a manager’s “toolkit” and join basic skills in accounting, finance, sustainability, human resources, marketing and information management as routine but essential elements of competent management.” (page 113)

I view the management of Scope 3 carbon emissions not as an impossible task but as a difficult but nevertheless routine element of responsible contract management. Of course, some organizations will have an easier time imposing reporting requirements on suppliers than others. And some organizations may have difficulty complying with the reporting requirements of their customers. Walmart, for example, requires its suppliers to provide data on a number of sustainability indicators, and the giant retailer’s power in the marketplace gives it the clout to command adherence to its demands. The company incentivizes sustainability management and reporting by paying compliant vendors faster than those that do not comply with sustainability requirements. Walmart is not alone in requiring sustainability measurement. Recently, Microsoft started to demand its suppliers reduce their carbon emissions. According to a report by Perry Cleveland-Peck in T he Wall Street Journal :

“ Microsoft will ask its main suppliers to use 100% carbon-free energy by the end of the decade, as it reported a 30% rise in emissions and acknowledged that the biggest challenge in meeting its climate goals comes from building new AI infrastructure and tackling the emissions from its supply chain. Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa said the company will require “select scale, high-volume suppliers to use 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030” for goods and services delivered to Microsoft. The tech heavyweight said the requirements will be rolled out at the start of the 2025 fiscal year as part of an overall update to the company’s Supplier Code of Conduct… “Right now for so many it’s just about getting them started. We have thousands upon thousands of suppliers. What we’re looking at is those of the largest volume because that’s really where the energy matters,” Nakagawa said. She added that the company is “not there yet” with regards to dropping suppliers who fail to meet the climate goal. Microsoft has an outsized influence over the tech sector due to its extensive supply chain and its dominant position within the market. Any move to force its suppliers to comply with the new directive is likely to send reverberations across the industry in the short term, but ultimately could have a significant positive impact on the sector’s efforts to decarbonize.”

The seriousness of this effort will not be known for years, but companies as large and visible as Microsoft find it difficult to avoid accountability. What is encouraging about this effort to add emission reduction to vendor management is Microsoft’s realization that they need to work with suppliers to accomplish what will surely be a complicated and difficult goal. Decarbonization will not be achieved overnight. It will take time and effort. It will require capital as well. If done correctly, it can result in reduced energy costs along with reduced emissions, since renewable energy is less expensive than fossil fuels. But the process of change takes time and transitions are rarely easy. It is also important to understand that the contracting organization’s Scope 3 emissions are also the vendor organization’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions. So, a more universal effort to decarbonize should result in emission reductions throughout the supply chain.

There are several practical problems in measuring and reporting Scope 3 emissions that were identified in an excellent December 2023 analysis by Deloitte’s Frits Klaver, Alissa Griffioen, Iris Mol, and Tim Moolhuijsen. According to the Deloitte team:

“To reduce Scope 3 emissions, they must be measured and reported, but this is difficult because the sources lie beyond a company’s operational reach. Poor data quality and availability across the supply chain is the main obstacle…Supply chain partners –especially smaller businesses – often lack good-quality primary data, or the resources to calculate and share it effectively and accurately. A further obstacle is the lack of common data-sharing infrastructure across value chains and countries. In the absence of primary data, it is a challenge to accurately evaluate and improve Scope 3 emissions… Engaging stakeholders across the value chain is essential for obtaining Scope 3 emissions data but can be challenging when partners do not measure their emissions or face difficulties improving their measurement, reporting and performance. Even for those that have data available, concerns about trust, confidentiality, intellectual property, or reputation can make them reluctant to share it. Resource constraints can limit a company’s Scope 3 emissions measurement and reporting capabilities.”

Microsoft appears to understand these difficulties and recognizes that to successfully measure Scope 3 emissions they will need to work with suppliers and initially focus their efforts on their larger suppliers since those are the vendors whose emission impact on Microsoft will be greatest. The fact that this measurement task is complex and difficult in no way justifies abandoning it.

The task of measuring Scope 3 emissions is simply a part of the overall contract or supply chain management task of extending an organization’s performance measurement system to its vendor organizations. This becomes part of the purchase agreement with the vendor. Just as an organization might require a vendor to provide an invoice in a particular format or submit it via a specified software application, so too can they require the submission of performance metrics—including greenhouse gas emissions—as part of their purchase agreement. The issue then becomes one of ensuring accuracy, presumably through an audit process.

Scope 3 reporting was a topic of widespread moaning and groaning among those commenting on the recent Security and Exchange Commission mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule. The fact is that well-managed organizations are already requiring performance reports from their vendors. While extending that reporting to greenhouse gas emissions may be difficult, it is far from infeasible. It will also get easier with experience. Measuring an organization’s impact on its natural environment and host communities is becoming a routine part of competent and effective organizational management. Extending that measurement process into an organization’s supply chain is simply an expression of current best management practices.

Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Columbia Climate School, Earth Institute or Columbia University.

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Congratulations to our Columbia Climate School MA in Climate & Society Class of 2024! Learn about our May 10 Class Day  celebration. #ColumbiaClimate2024

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Storms Batter Houston, Leaving at Least 7 Dead

School officials canceled classes in the city on Friday, and hundreds of thousands were left without power. It may take as much as 48 hours to restore power to some customers.

• Share full article

Deadly Storm Hits Texas

Heavy rains and winds shattered windows, scattering glass and debris on the streets of houston..

That’s electricity again. See, everything is like shut down.

By Orlando Mayorquín ,  Jesus Jiménez and Victoria Kim

Update: The storm in Houston shocked residents and left a landscape of debris .

Seven people were killed after intense thunderstorms swept through Texas on Thursday, bringing heavy rain, destructive winds and dangerous flooding to portions of the state that had already been inundated this month, and leaving nearly a million customers along the Gulf Coast without power on Friday.

The storm blew out windows, caved in the wall of a building and downed power lines across Houston, as powerful winds tore through downtown. Of the people who died, at least two were killed by falling trees, and one was killed in an accident involving a crane that toppled over in strong winds, according to Samuel Peña, the city’s fire chief. On Friday, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County confirmed that three others had died as a result of the severe weather.

The National Weather Service said survey teams had determined that a tornado touched down near Cypress, Texas, just northwest of Houston on Thursday night.

Teams were surveying other areas around Houston, including downtown, to see if the damage there had been caused by a tornado or strong winds, said Hayley Adams, a Weather Service meteorologist in Houston.

As officials began to clean up the damage, Mayor John Whitmire of Houston said at a news conference on Friday morning that investigators were trying to determine whether a fifth death was related to the weather.

Mr. Whitmire said it could take several weeks for power to be restored to some customers.

Share of customers without power by county

Wind gusts in downtown Houston reached speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, rivaling wind speeds recorded during Hurricane Ike, which caused widespread damage across a wide swath of Texas, including Houston, in 2008.

“It was fierce, it was intense, it was quick,” Mr. Whitmire said of the latest storm, “and most Houstonians didn’t have time to place themselves out of harm’s way.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in a statement on Friday that the Public Utility Commission of Texas was working with energy providers to restore power as quickly as possible.

Houston’s public school district said all schools would be closed Friday. Emergency responders warned people to stay home, saying that many roads were still impassable and that most traffic lights were out across the city. Firefighters still had to remove a live power line from a major highway.

Surveying the damage in downtown Houston with Larry J. Satterwhite, Houston’s acting police chief, and other city officials, Mr. Whitmire urged people to avoid the area on Friday night.

As of 2 p.m. local time, about 630,000 customers were without power across Texas, most of them in the Houston area, according to Poweroutage.us , which aggregates data from utility companies across the country. CenterPoint Energy, the provider in southeastern Texas, said it had received reports of downed power lines and advised customers that its call centers were overwhelmed . Another 55,000 were without power in Louisiana.

Forecasters warned that the weekend would also bring “sweltering heat” to southern Texas. Temperatures were expected to reach the upper 70s in the Houston area on Friday, but those without power, and air conditioning, would experience 90-degree temperatures through the weekend and into next week.

Lina Hidalgo, the top executive of Harris County, which includes Houston, said public libraries were open to serve as cooling centers.

Local news broadcasts reported considerable damage in downtown Houston, with the force of the winds shattering the windows of high-rise towers, twisting metal sign posts and felling trees on the street. The storm tore through the walls of at least one building, leaving piles of bricks, and falling debris also crushed cars. It left main streets blanketed in crushed glass and debris.

Images and videos circulating on social media emerging from east-central Texas on Thursday showed vehicles that appeared to struggle to navigate flooded roads in College Station, Texas, which was under a flash flood warning on Thursday evening.

One video showed strong winds whipping large panel structures at Minute Maid Park in Houston, where the Houston Astros were playing the Oakland Athletics.

The Weather Prediction Center said that showers and thunderstorms were expected across a broad part of the eastern United States on Friday. Moderate to heavy rain would likely focus in an area over the Lower Great Lakes, the Appalachians and the Gulf Coast.

An especially heavy downpour could have an impact in parts of Southern Mississippi and Alabama, it said, and there was still a risk of excessive rain over the already saturated central Gulf Coast states. The risk of severe thunderstorms was slight, but could affect about seven million people living there, the service said.

Flash flood warnings were in effect on Friday morning for parts of Mississippi and Louisiana, as a severe thunderstorm brought hail the size of golf balls to the city of San Patricio, Texas. The Weather Service office in Corpus Christi, Texas, warned residents to move inside because of “continuous cloud-to-ground lightning.”

Portions of Harris County, including areas near the San Jacinto River, were already hit with major flooding earlier this month. The flooding prompted Ms. Hidalgo, the Harris County executive, to issue a disaster declaration that would bring federal aid to residents who were affected by the storms.

Isabella Kwai , Christine Hauser , J. David Goodman and Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.

Orlando Mayorquín is a breaking news reporter, based in New York, and a member of the 2023-24 Times Fellowship class , a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Orlando Mayorquín

Jesus Jiménez covers breaking news, online trends and other subjects. He is based in New York City. More about Jesus Jiménez

Victoria Kim is a reporter based in Seoul and focuses on breaking news coverage across the world. More about Victoria Kim