Longing for Belonging
Putting the cult back into student culture.
It’s term 2 in Australia and that means it’s almost time for one of two surveys which will guide school decision making and related change for the rest of the year once the results are released.
That’s right! It’s Student Attitudes to School Survey season!
Data in schools is such an interesting metric. An objective measurement which quickly becomes subjective in nature as stories are crafted and refined to explain the data or paint the data in a positive light.1
In my experience within a few schools in my career, this data has almost always highlighted one thing strongly in the high school students I have chosen to work with.
They do not have a connection to school. They do not feel a sense of belonging.
School is just a place they go because they have to. A stepping stone to where they want to be.
When you drive long haul to go on a holiday you rarely feel a deep sense of connection with your time on the highway.
‘Belonging’ itself can be challenging in the same way that differentiation and agency are in that it can mean wildly different things to different stakeholders.
In its simplest form, belonging is the feeling of being accepted and valued in a community. A place where you can be your unfiltered self without a fear of judgement or exclusion.
I’ve thought about this a lot recently as I had this revelation about how much my personal wellbeing benefits from being involved in a community.
This has occurred in two main ways.
The first was when I ran in a Backyard Ultra running event in early May and because the event itself lasted over 3 days, the event village became somewhat of a shanty town where everyone became fast friends and became deeply invested each others success. The race director went out of his way to learn all of the competitors names and stories and then when they finally finished he would make a truly personal connection and make you feel like you and what you put yourself through mattered.
The second was when Think Forward Educators held a social event on a Friday night mid term in the Melbourne CBD and a range of disparate educators which shared ideology were able to come together and talk openly about their thoughts, feeling new and experiences in education. To be a part of this community was instantly validating because to use one of my favourite David Didau idioms, often as a teacher pushing the science of learning in a state school you can feel like a ‘warlord in a failed state’ and so it was nice to spend some time with my fellow warlords and warpersons.
In schools where I’ve seen success in developing a sense of belonging there has always been a sense of pride from staff and students in being connected with that school.
In Australia, I have never personally seen this done effectively outside of the independent school sector.
My first experience of seeing true belonging within a school was in 2017 where I had the opportunity to go on a teaching exchange in Newport Harbour in California. This was a school in a relatively affluent area but was host to a range of socio economic demographics. The school had no school uniform and yet I’d estimate that over half of the student body were in school branding clothing every day while they were in attendance.
This made me wonder, “why on earth would a teenager proudly wear school branded clothing when it is completely optional”2. The answer was that school wasn’t just a place they came to learn, it was an all encompassing community where their hobbies and interests were built into the school day through sporting teams and clubs. This meant that every student was feeling some level of pride, connection and success every single day without it feeling like a hokey or forced addition.
Amazingly, this all encompassing nature also meant that behaviour was more consistent because students knew that to represent their school in their area of interest or expertise they needed to be at their best. That’s not to say that removal from these programs was dangled like a threat, it was quite the opposite. These programs meant that students wanted to be there.
I hear you thinking, well that sounds great but how was the instruction and pedagogy?
We’re not talking about that today!3
Additionally I hear you thinking, well we are not like American schools so how the heck to we build that connection when the architecture of our communities is fundamentally different?
Wow, thank you and your quite verbose thoughts for the segue into the Australian context.
The Bland Down Under
We are going to launch this discussion with a focus on the context of a public or government school. The reason for this? It is the context where I’ve wired the majority of my teaching career and it is also the sector in which I’ve seen achieving a sense of belonging become a fools errand where schools launch initiative after initiative with no movement in the metrics they measure.
So how do state schools attempt to create a sense of belonging? Here are a number of strategies I’ve seen launched without moving the needle:
Fundraising effort with stretch goals for teachers to face ritual embarrassment.
A student barbecue or free lunch.
A pastoral care class.
(Insert cause here) day.
A reward system linked to merits.
Fundraising effort leading to Ritual Embarrassment:
Ice bucket challenges, head shaving, dunk tanks, pies in faces. Working in a school you’ve probably seen them all. Caiti Wade and Greg Ashman had a great discussion about this on their When Will They Learn? Podcast4 which delved deeper into the darker underbelly of these fundraising missions. This is accompanied by a great post by Greg himself on the topic.5
Raising money for charity is a noble and important mission. We see it often that individuals will raise money for a cause they care deeply about and they incentivize their community by putting themselves through a challenge or great discomfort.
In schools however, the money raised is rarely connected with the cause it’s going towards. I’d challenge you to quiz some students watching next time you see a teacher have hot sauce poured on their head in front of a roaring crowd as to what this was all for. Even more ironic, students aren’t the most flush with cash to contribute to these efforts, so more often than not it is the fellow teachers that dip into their own income which they are making by supervising the event to help cause the humiliation of their peers.
Yet after all of this we expect the students to suddenly feel a greater sense of belonging. When from their perspective they needed to do precisely nothing and then cheer and jeer as a teacher they either like or loathe is put on display and made to look a fool. Do the students suddenly feel like by being a member of this community they’ve made the world a better place and therefore they’re proud to be a student at the school? Or will they just remember for the next 24 hours about that time their teacher almost screamed a swear word in front of everyone at lunch time?
A Student Barbecue or Free Lunch:
They do say there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that couldn’t be more true in the context of schools.
Firstly, feeding a student cohort can cost a school funds which could go to a number of other areas which would positively impact the student learning environment. Every bowl of pasta or hamburger is a mini whiteboard lost. Every fairy floss or ice cream cone given out is a set of books or pens that can’t be provided to students in need.
Secondly, how can a one-off meal truly change student attitudes about school holistically? Yes, the gesture is kind and well meaning but if you previously had a negative perception of the school it would have to be a transcendent meal to change that perception. If a school canteen or barbecue is able to take a student to flavour town in that way, I cannot wait to find the location and apply for a teaching position.
Lastly as an addition point on the free lunch dilemma. I have never seen a free lunch that hasn’t led to increased litter and student lapses in behaviour.
A Pastoral Care Class:
This is inherently a positive initiative to have in schools. However, the implementation can leave a bit to be desired. For pastoral care to truly be effective staff need to buy in and live and breathe the curriculum in their lessons. When this isn’t the case it becomes an exercise in babysitting.
When done well a pastoral care teacher can become a trusted individual for students. Students can also benefit from improved knowledge and understanding related to health and wellbeing. The scary reality however seems to be that too often these lessons are well conceived but poorly delivered as teachers do not believe in the program, which means students do not value the program and belonging suffers as students feel the school is wasting hours of their time.
(Insert cause here) Day:
Happy LGBTQIA+, teacher appreciation, multicultural, RUOK, talk like a pirate, Pi, etc., day! For this one day, and only this day we will celebrate and highlight everything that makes this day special. Tomorrow? Business as usual.
Friday? Ask them if they’re okay! Monday? Call home about all of their overdue work regardless of the circumstance. Today? Wear purple to celebrate everyone’s sexuality! Tomorrow? We’d prefer you didn’t express your identity in a way that highlights a grey area in school uniform policy.
These days are all well meaning (I sense a theme in all of this) but when we only give 24 hours (which is really 6 hours) to celebrate something it reeks of tokenism. One-offs do not create connection or community. Sometimes they can actually further highlight our differences and further increase any divide that exists.
A Reward System:
Rewards are inherently flawed. They make the behaviour more about the outcome than the reason it is required. They can create superficial short term compliance based on extrinsic motivation which only exists as long as the reward is present.
I have seen classrooms with whiteboards with a goal set for their class that said “if the average on the test is above 70% we will have a pizza party”. Sure, in the short term that may motivate students, they may even meet the target. But what if they don’t? What message does that send the class or cohort? We will only give you positive benefits if you meet the targets we say mean that you’re good enough. There are students in every class that scoring 70% isn’t remotely realistic based on their previous academic experiences and their result could then take away pizza from the peers. How is that going to build a sense of belonging?
In a wider school example, I’ve seen and heard of many schools assigning points to their merit system that students can save up and cash in for prizes when they have enough. The problem here? These rewards often favour students who were previous behavioural concerns which now act marginally better as well as students already excelling or even worse, students with perfect attendance! Nothing tells students with complex wellbeing or medical history that they belong quite like telling them only students with perfect attendance get rewards.
The cost of belonging in Oz
To hold this discussion about the pursuit of belonging in schools within Australia (and hopefully applicable in other contexts too) we must also touch on the Independent and Catholic schools systems. There are certainly likely to be many exceptions to some of the ideas I am about to raise but I would argue that these sectors do a far better job at cultivating belonging.
As I have no actually experience in the Catholic system the following is just an assumption based on my own musings about belonging and community. I believe that the uniting faith of students and staff within a Catholic school could do a lot of the heavy lifting to create a larger sense of belonging because everybody shares a connected purpose.
I do however have some experience at an Independent school and saw what was a few simple but radical systems which created young people who were not just students. They were students of that school! The first contributor was that extra curricular activities were not optional. For staff or for students. Students must opt in to an extra curricular of their choice and staff must take one for at least 2 terms of the year. Much like my American experience of earlier, this created a strong sense of school pride amongst the cohort. Students would compete against rival schools every week in a variety of fields. The results would be announced and celebrated by student leaders in assembly’s. When there was a rowing regatta6, the whole school community would come together to support each other. School performing arts events would instantly sell out local theatres. Even the daily pastoral care class would have a consistent focus across the 5 sessions of the week in building that sense of community by continuously doing the events which other schools may put on as a one-off for a single day.
Where does this leave us with belonging? Students with a strong sense of belonging within a school are likely to have greater motivation and even higher academic success7. Yet, this sense of belonging does not come from one token gesture. It comes from a consistent and ongoing building of a culture which values individuals and makes them feel seen and heard.
What lessons can the public sector learn from the American and Independent schools I referred to?
This is more challenging. What these schools did was by design. Built into the architecture of their school.
In a public school, inter school sport is a one day round robin that only leads to more if you find success. Clubs for other students interests rely on the kindness of teachers hearts and their willingness to give up their own break times and essentially accept a pay cut and worse conditions so that students can feel seen and heard. It’s a thankless task that many teachers still embark upon and all credit to them and their altruistic nature. Most teachers however are already working through their recess and lunch breaks and then another hour or two when they get home and across the weekend. The candle is not burning at both ends. The candle is a ball of wicks and they’re all on fire. I do not know a single teacher who does not want to make the students in front of them feel like they belong. But until the public system can codify this in their wages and conditions in a way that’s sustainable then I believe that student belonging will continue to be a dragon that school leaders chase with tokenistic rituals and wonder why nothing changes.
At the end of the day the best strategy for improving student belonging within a school is consistent and high expectations for managing student behaviour and high quality teaching practice such as explicit teaching. Teaching well is the best wellbeing strategy.
Students will connect with a place that makes them feel safe and capable.
I bought a school Hawaiian shirt from their uniform store which I’m still shocked existed.
cough cough inquiry cough cough
If I was to graph the difference in frequency in the use of the word regatta across my experience of 11 years in state schools and 1 year in independent schools it would still be 99% to 1% in favour of the independent school system.
Slaten, C. D., Ferguson, J. K., Allen, K. A., Brodrick, D. V., & Waters, L. (2016). School Belonging: A Review of the History, Current Trends, and Future Directions. Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 33(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/edp.2016.6