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Chapter 1
Belonging Thrives When Teachers Believe and Prepare
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When I don't belong, I feel invisible and completely alone.
a 10th grader
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This chapter includes information, self-reflection prompts, and active strategies to help you get ready to develop a climate and classroom management plan where belonging can thrive. We also include some tips for designing a first-day plan to kick off your belonging practices the right way.
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Ahh! The days of vacation breakâthose long weeks of summer or between school terms. You try to forget about the planning, the students' needs, the bureaucracy, the schedules, and the issues. Most teachers look forward to these times, even when the break is filled with the bustle (and sometimes pressures) of family activities, travel, graduate studies, professional development, or short-term jobs. But not too far into the "break," most teachers start thinking about the coming year, which includes thinking about classroom management and relationships with students. One teacher we know ends the year by making a list of "Things I Vow to Do Differently Next Year." On and off all summer, she gathers ideas for ways to start the year on a better foot, management-wise, and keep it consistent throughout the year.
An Education Week survey about the sense of belonging at school (Blad, 2017) collected responses from 528 educators. Over 80 percent of the respondents reported the personal belief that it is important for students to feel they belong in the classroomâand over 40 percent of respondents said it was very challenging for them to find strategies to help students fit in. Our own experience as educators and our contacts with educators throughout the country has led us to a similar conclusion: Teachers believe that belonging is important for student academic success and overall well-being, yet they're not always sure how to help this happen.
Belief in the importance of belonging, alone, is not enough. If your classroom is to have successful belonging-centered management at its core, you must be prepared before students show up with strategies that will work to promote both belonging and good classroom management. This begins with your understanding of belonging and how it is nourished (or impaired), which in turn requires exploring the elements of management that are affected by students' levels of belongingness.
Strategy 1: Reflect on Belonging
The first step in engaging with the topic of belonging and its connection to classroom management is this: Consider what belonging means to you. Your perspective on belonging is influenced by your own experiences and situations you've witnessed (or heard about secondhand) that involved othersâsuch as your own children, your students, or your colleagues. Your history with belonging helps form your attitudes about it and guides the approaches you are compelled to use in addressing it for your students.
Here are some prompts to get you started:
- Describe or define belonging as you understand it, based on your own experiences.
- List a few places or situations where you feel or have felt a sense of belonging.
- How can you "tell" you belong in those places or situations? Dig into those feelings of belongingness and describe them.
- List a few places or situations in which you feel or have felt a lack of belonging.
- Think back to your student days. What factors contributed to your sense of belonging (or not belonging) at school or in a classroom?
- List some signs you look for or have seen that suggest students in your classroom don't feel a sense of belonging.
- Describe what and how you feel when you see a student (or perhaps a child of your own) struggle with belonging.
- Describe your past experiencesâsuccesses and failuresâwith helping students feel they belong.
- Describe the ways in which your own background, culture, and life experiences are similar to those of your students.
- Describe the ways in which your own background, culture, and life experiences are different from those of your students.
As the icon indicates, this reflection activity is included in the downloadable toolset at http://www.ascd.org/we-belong-122002. As or after you respond to these prompts, think about the implications your answers might have for your teaching and classroom management. You might also complete and discuss this activity with colleagues in a grade level, team, department, or staff meeting.
Strategy 2: Boost Your Belonging IQ
Are you ready to deepen your belonging understandings and insights? Here are some questions to guide you through a reflective second reading of this book's Introduction. You may flip (or click) back through the text, highlighting and making notes on the page, or you can download a copy of these questions as a worksheet.
- Review the opening text of the Introductionâthe three paragraphs beginning on page 1. Highlight (or record) the words, phrases, or ideas that stand out to you. Make notes about why these grabbed you.
- Highlight the definitions of belonging and school belonging in the "What Belonging Is" section, beginning on page 2. Read them aloud. Then, in this same section, highlight the final two sentences of the Baumeister and Leary quote. Read these sentences out loud. What stands out to you? What experiences from your own practice do they call to mind?
- Review the list of the research-verified benefits of belonging in the section "Why Belonging in School Matters," beginning on page 3. Highlight any benefits you have personally witnessed. What other characteristics or benefits of belonging you have seen?
- On pages 3â4, review the bulleted list of what students can experience when they do not feel a sense of belonging in school. Highlight consequences you have personally witnessed. What other consequences of "not belonging" have you seen?
- In the "How to Increase Belongingness" section (beginning on p. 4), put a checkmark by factors you already attend to. Circle or highlight factors that challenge you, that you haven't thought much about, that you would like to learn more about, or that you would like to increase your abilities to provide.
- Review the section titled "Classroom Managementâand the Difference It Makes" (beginning on p. 5). Carefully reread the final two paragraphs. In your own words, briefly summarize the partnership between classroom management and belonging.
- In that same section, highlight concepts or messages about classroom management that excite you. Which do you find most compelling?
- In the section, "How to Combine Belonging and Management in Practice" (beginning on p. 8), highlight the topic sentence or key idea in the opening paragraph.
- In that same section, reread each of the six actions for increasing belonging. Pause after each one and ask yourself, "Can I commit to doing this consistently and better than I have already been doing?" Jot down one idea or goal for action next to each of the six actions.
- What one sentence, phrase, or idea from the Introduction was the most powerful or memorable to you? Write it down. Continue to refer to it as you make your way through the book.
Strategy 3: Celebrate Successful Belonging Practices
Most likely, many techniques and activities that you currently use do help students feel they belong. You just might not have been aware that these were belonging-promoting practices.
For example, when Patti was a teacher, she often started the day with five to seven minutes of no-pressure sharing time. She might relate something that happened to her the night before or ask the students a question such as "What's happened in your life since I saw you yesterday?" It definitely added a family feeling to the classroom, and she found it especially heartwarming when a fairly shy student would volunteer a story.
Figure 1.1's brainstorming guide can prompt you to review what you're doing now and consider the scope of your practice and categories your actions might fall into. What are some of your current practices that further belonging in your classroom? List them by category or download a copy of the brainstorming guide and record them in the space provided. Celebrate your belonging practices and find ways to strengthen and expand them.
Figure 1.1. Brainstorming Guide: What You Already Do to Help Students Belong
Attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors you model
Ways you relate to students
Expectations you communicate to students
Activities that intentionally teach emotional skills
Activities that intentionally teach social skills
Activities that boost students' confidence in themselves as learners
Activities that help students see one another's strengths and value
Activities that give students opportunity to express their opinions
Activities that give students opportunity to make choices about their own learning
Strategy 4: Examine Management Practices That Affect Belonging
A major premise of this book is the way a teacher manages a classroom strongly affects whether or not students feel that they belong. Management protocols or procedures, even those that seem minor, can either bolster or sabotage progress toward belongingness.
So now that you're thinking about belonging, it's a good time to do a checkup on your own classroom management practices and set some goals for increasing belongingness. Use the procedure mapped out in Figure 1.2.
Figure 1.2. Reflection: Does Your Classroom Management Enhance Belonging?
Part I. Examine your classroom management in light of the need for students to belong.
A. List 8 of your management practices or strategies.
(Think about classroom setting, schedule, organization, classroom protocols and procedures, relationships with students, expectations and consequences, problem resolution, your responses to misbehavior, style of instruction, etc.)
B. Go back and thoughtfully examine each one you listed with a focus on belonging. Ask, "Does this help students belong?" Write YES! or Keep! or write NO! or Improve! (f...
