5 signs of a toxic learning environment

Does your child dread to go to school each day? Does he/she come home with degraded and downhearted feeling? Be aware! your child might be studying and spending the most important part of his/her life in a toxic learning environment.

Here are some symptoms of a toxic study environment that you may want to watch out for:

If your child is constantly nervous, or worried: If your child is worried about school or things happening at school or if he/she is making up excuses to skip school now and then, there might be a reason for you to be worried. There are chances of him getting bullied by his peers or even abused.

Excessive pressure from teachers: Every child is different, some children can lesser and slower compared to his peers at school. Expecting too much from such children and addressing his mistakes in front of his peers might make him feel demoralised.

Your child might get uncomfortable with this, and might start lying to you or falsifying his reports and commit other breaches that he might think would save him from more embarrassment at home.

Favouritism: A child is very sensitive to who his teachers considers as a favourite student. Your child might start doing immoral things to become a teachers favourite. Be aware of what route your child takes to become a favourite student to his teacher.

Bullying: Bullying in school can be verbal abuse that can be demeaning one in front of his classmates. This can also reach an extent of threatening and physical violence.

If your child is a target, he might be afraid to go to school and even find vague reasons to skip school. This might also reflect in his academic performance.

If your child is being the scapegoat: In a toxic learning environment, the bully castigates his mistakes on someone else. He/she will never take responsibility for his actions. Blaming an innocent child can burden the innocent child and later the bully might target others innocent children too.

Hostile relationships between staff and other students: Some students have no idea how to respond to those who disrupt the learning environment or who make it difficult for them to focus on learning. Such situations can have potential harmful effects, the kids begin to resent the relationship between the teacher or the staff and themselves. They also loose trust in the goodness of teacher-student relationship.

Lack of progress in learning: If your child shows signs of demotivation about learning or even sees no purpose to go to school, he/she might be into serious, negative experiences (at school). This could be with their peers or teacher or any one else. A clear picture of this can be seen in his/her lack of progress academically.

The above mentioned signs could be some of the reasons for your child's unusual behaviour on account of toxic learning environment. If your child is being nervous, blamed, belittled, bullied or made a scapegoat, he/she may loose confidence, may not wish to go to school or enjoy school-life. This could be dangerous academically and also for the future of your child.