While handwashing best practices may look different as children grow, the underlying importance stays the same: wash your hands well and wash them often. As a teacher, maintaining good hand hygiene not only keeps you and your students healthy, but it also instills behavior in your pupils, planting the seed for better health and safety in the next generation.
Students learn by example. This applies to both the lessons you intend to teach and some that you don’t even realize you are giving. From a scientific standpoint, this is known to be caused by mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are cells in the central nervous system that are stimulated when someone observes someone else perform an activity and then again when they replicate that action.
These little cells give teachers an extra tool to teach their students hygiene and handwashing best practices simply by leading by example. But when should you wash your hands to stay healthy and help your students do the same? It may be more often than you think.
As an early childhood teacher, you likely spend most of your day providing care and creating activities that engage and maintain a young child’s focus. These activities often require a lot of interaction, either with shared items or other students. With such activities comes more contact points, making it even more important for you and your students to wash your hands thoroughly and often. This is why there is stringent regulation surrounding hand hygiene in early childhood education.
To meet regulatory standards, and set a good example of handwashing best practices for your students, you should wash your hands in each of the following instances:
Unlike early childhood, K-12 schools do not have regulatory standards around the frequency that staff should be washing their hands. So it's incumbent upon the teachers to be aware of the times when you should wash your hands. Additionally, as supervision decreases it’s up to students to follow handwashing best practices, which further emphasizes the importance of teachers leading by example.
You should wash your hands:
If you are interested in learning more about handwashing in childcare and education settings please attend our upcoming informational webinar. The discussion will cover handwashing best practices, teaching strategies, and resources, arming you with the tools needed to become a handwashing superhero!