Helping School Leaders Create a Healthy and Supportive School Environment

More than 95% of our nation’s young people are in school for about 6 hours a day for up to 13 years. And these years are a critical time for social, psychological, physical, and intellectual development.

As a school administrator, you have a challenging job. You oversee school operations, instruction, and daily school activities. At the same time, you need to create a healthy and supportive school environment for your students and staff.

Here are ways you can promote a healthy and supportive school environment. Most of the actions under each tip can be done with limited resources.

A healthy and supportive school environment can:

Improve student conduct, attendance rates, academic achievement, and graduation rates. It can also help you retain employees. (Source: Critical connections: health and academics. J Sch Health. 2015;85(11):740–758.)
Help reduce gaps in opportunity and achievement for students of color who may be underserved by the schools they attend. (Source: Making ESSA’s Equity Promise Real: State Strategies to Close the Opportunity Gap. Learning Policy Institute; 2018.)

You can:

Give students enough time to eat school meals (at least 20 minutes).
Provide access to healthy foods and drinks for school meals, including smart snacks and water.
Offer daily physical education.
Encourage classroom physical activity, like stretch breaks.
Start an employee wellness program to support the physical and mental health of your staff
Get to know your staff and students as individuals. Make sure everyone feel connected and part of your school community.

You can:

Check in with students regularly to find out how they’re feeling. Use journals or electronic polling tools.
Encourage students to take mindfulness breaks.
Encourage students to identify their emotions. Talk with them about how to express emotions in a healthy way.
Teach staff how to use role modeling and interpersonal skills to improve teacher-student relationships.

See the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to identify more ways to promote student health and well-being.

You can:

Hire certified school counselors, school psychologists, and school social workers to provide these services.
Adopt policies and practices that take into account potential trauma experienced by students.
Make sure staff know how to connect students to school and community support services if they need them. Encourage staff to use these support services themselves if needed.

You can:

Keep parents informed about healthy and supportive school environment policies and practices. Use your school’s website to describe how these policies and practices support student health and achievement.
Provide ways for parents to give regular feedback—for example, through surveys, emails, phone calls, and text messaging.
Ask parents to help you plan and organize activities designed to improve the school environment.

Resources

The tips above can help you create a healthy and supportive school environment. For more information on this topic to help schools and parents, visit our Creating a Healthy and Supportive School Environment website.

You can also use these resources to guide your efforts: