With all the time you spend in the classroom with your flock of students, the last thing you want is any intruding toxins, problems with cleanliness, or worst of all, poor feng shui.

That's why it's worth your while to take a peek at the World Health Organization's 2004 report, "The Physical School Environment." It's got a bundle of information about the effects of the physical environments on personal health, including the dangers of pollutants, poor sanitation or ventilation, and toxins that could be compromising your students' ability to learn.

Who knew?

What we're saying: the physical environment of your school—both indoors and outdoors—is an important factor in student health, wellness, and academic performance. Convinced? That's not all. The report's got plans for implementing health protection interventions and making improvements.

But Wait; There's More

That's right: when we talk about creating healthy learning environments, we're not just talking about air quality, water quality, and low VOC building materials. We're also talking about your classroom furniture.

In 2011, the OECD, or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (hey, they're European, so they're allowed the "s" and the hyphen in those otherwise normal words) put out a report titled "The Future of the Physical Learning Environment: School Facilities that Support the User." And that report suggests that classroom configurations as well as specific equipment and tools can also have an impact on teaching and learning.

Both reports make important suggestions for overall systemic changes—such as installing radon monitors, inspecting for mold and mildew, purchasing modular classroom furniture, and limiting the use of carpeting. Those all sound great, but—let's be real—easier said than done. Unless you're the type who'll head to school at 5:00AM on the first day of class to pull out all the carpets.

In which case, um, good luck.

But for now, we're going to focus on three things you can do right now to improve the physical environment of your classroom.

1. Green it up.

Bringing plants into the classroom can affect your students' behavior, their level of investment, and ultimately their academic performance. So say studies conducted in Taiwan and Texas in 2009, and in Brisbane in 2010. Hey, green has got to mean something.

 

Yep. Your plants might die. That's okay. Circle of life, arewerite?

As all three studies point out, we've known for a while that the presence of plants in our homes and workplaces can lift spirits, decrease stress, and improve air quality. But we've known very little about how bringing plants into classrooms might affect students' health and performance—until recently.

Turns out that plants can have a positive impact on students' health, attitudes, and even academic performance. Don't believe us? Check out the sources above. And by all means, go pick up a potted fern or at least a cactus on your way to work tomorrow.

If you don't want to throw down your own money on our flowered friends, you could always try one of the following:

• see if there's a local greenhouse that could make a donation to your classroom;
• send a letter home to parents soliciting donations—or even loans—of classroom plants (you can always send them home over vacations or at the end of the school year); or
• check with friends and family members (yours and your students') to see if anyone would be willing to give you some clippings you can propagate.

You could even make plant acquisition a classroom project—one that could get your students involved in letter writing, fundraising, health education, and horticulture. There are so many wins in that one, we lost count. The main one obviously being that they learn the word "horticulture."

2. Turn the tables on 'em.

We mean it literally: rearrange the furniture.

Per the OECD report, flexibility is super important in a physical learning space. In other words, the greater your ability to provide for different groupings and arrangements of chairs, desks, and tables, the better.

In the ideal classroom designed by students, teachers, and experts over the course of the three-year study that was the basis for this report, tables and chairs should be organized to promote individual, pair, and group work at various times. Need an illustration? No problem. Head to page 5 of the OECD doc. You're welcome.

While you might not be able to set up an ideal situation with the furniture your school has stuck you with, see what you can do to rearrange things with an eye toward providing options for your students. Chances are it's at least something.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you provide a quiet, somewhat insular space for students who need a loner moment (or during a test)?
• Is there a table or grouping of desks available for students who want or need to work together?
• What about rows facing forward for direct instruction or presentations?
• Can those desks pair up for partner work?

We know, we know. You probably can't provide all of these options at once, but you could create a few classroom layouts tailored toward different needs and help your students become experts at quickly rearranging things to suit a particular lesson or goal. I.e., "We have presentations today—let's arrange the desks into Layout 3, worker ants" (epithet optional).

The idea is flexibility. Don't let your classroom furniture control you—find a way to control your furniture. Or at least maneuver it every once in awhile.

3. Axe the axe.

If you teach tweens or teens, you may be dealing with a proliferation of body sprays that rivals the miasma wafting out of the nearest mall. While many people prefer artificial fragrances to the actual smell of, well…teenagers, all of the sprays, perfumes, deodorants, air fresheners, soaps, and after-bath-splashes that are on the market these days (and that tweens and teens have laid on thick since their advent) can have a negative impact on individual health.

In addition to potentially exacerbating asthma, fragrances can set off allergies and cause headaches or rashes for some people—and they can be just plain old annoying or distracting for others.

We know your students aren't going to like it (or maybe it's you that needs to lay off the Sean John 3AM), but consider making your classroom a fragrance-free zone.

Again, you can turn this into a learning opportunity. Have your students do some research on the effects of fragrance exposure and draw some conclusions. Then have them help you institute the policy. The air will be cleaner, and all those young noses will (eventually) thank you for the change.

Next Steps

Ready for more? You could always lead the charge to make larger improvements in your building, or perhaps even district-wide. In that case, take a gander at these ideas:

• Encourage an inspection (and an overhaul, if necessary) of the cleaning products used in your school.
• Get a handle on your school's indoor air quality and see what you can do to improve it.
• Become an expert on physical learning environments (you're welcome for the head start) and speak at your staff and faculty meetings or district-wide workshops. If that's not your cup of no-fragrance tea, bring in an expert. There may be free programs through your local or state government or a health-centered nonprofit—to help with this.
• Check on the use of pesticides on school grounds to see if there are any issues in your space.
• Work toward finding ways to integrate technology into classroom spaces to increase the flexibility of the learning environment.

And you can always find more ways to be creative, involve your students, and make it (or at least make it look like) a joint effort. And that way you chase out some toxins, and boost the feng shui. What could be better than that?