How to Keep Your Classroom Clean, Disinfected, and Safe
Essential for the Health of Students and Educators
With hundreds of students plus a full staff of educators, administrators, and more, schools are high-traffic areas. And with a lot of traffic comes a lot of germs. As a result, it’s essential for the health of students and educators to keep classrooms clean, disinfected, and safe.
The Importance of Keeping Our Classrooms Clean
With so many children coming from so many different environments into a close area like a classroom, schools quickly become a fertile hotbed for germs. Studies show that kindergarteners get about 12 colds per year, while adolescents have 2 to 4. Furthermore, the school year runs concurrently with cold season – from September to March. This all adds up to almost 60 million missed days of school per year. That’s 60 million days are at home recovering instead of at school learning, growing, and building relationships with lifelong friends.
It’s crucial, then, to start encouraging healthy habits at a young age. Poor or lax hygiene is a major contributor to the spread of pathogens, viruses, and bacteria and it can come in many forms. Educating kids about germs and teaching them best practices concerning cleanliness can drastically reduce the spread of illness and have positive effects on overall health.
Start With the Hands
Teach kids how to wash their hands properly with soap and water and make it fun by having them sing their ABCs twice while doing it. This ensures they’re scrubbing for the right amount of time.
Stock Up and Use Often
Make sure your classroom is well-supplied with a good all-purpose cleaner and disinfectant like Bioesque’s Botanical Disinfectant Solution. Use it to clean and disinfect trouble areas like desks, door handles, and shared supplies several times a day.
Get Kids on the Same Page
Take some time to make sure students know what germs are, what they can do, and how they can spread. In a classroom demonstration, cover a couple students’ hands with glitter and have them shake hands with other students to give them a visual idea of how quickly and easily germs can spread through the classroom.
The “Dracula Sneeze”
We want children to cover their mouths when they sneeze or cough but doing so into bare hands is terrible hygiene. Have them sneeze or cough into their elbow – like a vampire hiding in a cape – in order to help reduce the spread of germs.
Positive Reinforcement
When students are practicing good hygiene and helping to keep the classroom clean, be sure to praise their good behavior. They’re much more likely to make it a habit.
Get Parents Involved
Specifically, encourage them to keep their child home in the event of an illness. It helps the child recover more quickly and helps to keep the other students safe and healthy.
To make sure our children get the chance to learn and grow, we need to make sure our schools are clean, disinfected, and safe. It takes a little bit of extra work, but with the right knowledge, the right habits, and the right cleaning and disinfecting supplies, we can all chip in and do our part to ensure our classrooms are healthy and productive.
