By Dr. Jerry Simon MD.
September 6 2026 | Health
One of the things that we don’t often pay much attention to, is the orderliness of our environment and how it affects leaning. An orderly school micro-environment significantly boosts student focus, academic performance and mental and behavioural wellbeing. And this will be out focus today. However, the macro-environment of our country is also very important to the school. For example, imagine the stress placed on children when they are bogged down in slow moving traffic for over an hour, before school starts, because of poor road way planning or infrastructure. So, order at any and every level is a vital necessity for national development.
Academic and Cognitive Benefits: When the learning space is cluttered it forces the brain to expend more energy to reduce the background noise, whether this noise is visual or audio. When the clutter is reduced it lowers the load on the brain, improves memory retention and enables the students to more readily focus on the subject at hand. This leads to enhanced class cohesion and overall improvement of individual and group academic performance.
Behavioural and Social Advantages: An orderly classroom, which entails consistent leadership, transparent rules, and established procedures, helps to reduce minor behaviour issues or prevent them from escalating to bigger ones. Predictable routines also help students to practice more self-management, self-regulation and contribute to overall stress reduction. When students participate in maintaining order, they build responsibility, teamwork, and a stronger sense of belonging.
Teacher and Community Wellbeing: A well-managed environment reduces burnout and frustration for teachers and other staff members.
This enables more efficient cooperation between academic and non-academic staff and teachers to focus on teaching rather than have to settle a rowdy environment or clutter. It also adds status to the non-academic staff, improving work pride, performance and efficiency. Predictable, calm surroundings foster positive attitudes toward learning and boost overall school morale for both students and staff.
So now, here are some practical ways to enhance order in the school environment: Establish and execute a plan of objects to keep, recycle, donate or dump. This list can target things like dried out board markers, obsolete computers and old worksheets. Have a daily reset routine. This can be done within the last 15 minutes of the day, where students can participate in taking out classroom trash, tidying their classroom and room-prep for any special activity the next day, such as art, craft or a practical low-tech science project. Where possible, practice the judicial use of electronic devices and encourage and give students rewards for maintaining a tidy, organized working space. Other measures include colour coding storage and waste bins, organizing visual wall displays, establish a centralized lost and found station and optimize classroom furniture and tools.
Rather than stifling creativity, an orderly school environment can be the perfect canvas for us to develop the greatest masterpieces of development – our children.
Dr. Simon can be contacted at NSA Medical Surgical & Rehabilitation Centre at (268) 462 0631 or (268) 779 2176.