Why Teach a Sense of Belonging in your Classroom
A sense of belonging is a feeling of being included, of closeness with others, and that you fit into a group or community. The need to belong and feel welcomed is a basic human need. Children, especially upper elementary students and adolescents have a strong desire to belong. It’s important that we establish classroom environments where students feel accepted and included--not only by the teacher, but by their peers. Setting the expectation that students extend a sense of belonging to others (and therefore expecting that students do not exclude) is a key component of a positive classroom community.
In the professional book, All Learning is Social and Emotional: Helping Students Develop Essential Skills for the Classroom and Beyond by Dominique Smith, Douglas B. Fisher, and Nancy Frey, the authors state, “Although teachers are not able to make friendship materialize out of thin air, we can set the stage for relationships to strengthen among our students.” AMEN! We can set up classroom environments where all students feel welcomed and are acknowledged--and not just acknowledged by the adults in the room, but by their peers.
I teach a “sense of belonging” unit as my first morning meeting unit. During this unit, I introduce students to key vocabulary (like belonging, acceptance, community, and exclusion), have students self-reflect on their own sense of belonging, lead whole-group discussions, and read aloud picture books where the desire for belonging is the central theme. My goals for teaching about a sense of belonging are twofold: I want my students to feel that they belong in our classroom and school community and I want them to actively seek out opportunities to be inclusive and extend a sense of belonging to others.
Why teach students about a sense of belonging?
SCHOOLS SHOULD BE A PLACE OF A WELCOMING COMMUNITY
For a moment, I want you to imagine how it would feel to walk into a room full of people that you are somewhat familiar and acquainted with. Now, imagine that not one person acknowledges you. If you put yourself in the shoes of children and adolescents and imagine that the room is the school building or a classroom, I’m sure you recognize that they would experience an unwelcoming, negative feeling, but this is an experience that many children have in going to school.
Schools are a controlled environment where we have the opportunity to set the climate and expectations. Schools should be a place where the students we serve and their families feel welcomed—by school staff and other students. We can teach our students how to intentionally get to know others and welcome them.
STUDENTS WHO HAVE A STRONG SENSE OF BELONGING ARE MORE LIKELY TO FEEL COMFORTABLE BEING THEMSELVES
We know that issues of fitting in and following the crowd run rampant in upper elementary classrooms and middle schools. We often encourage our students to be themselves, but specifically teaching about a sense of belonging through the lens of inclusion and acceptance can encourage students to actually accept others for who they are. By teaching students about the concept of belonging, we encourage all students to be themselves and we create a safe environment where students can “fit-in” for the right reasons. Students who have a strong sense of belonging FOR THE RIGHT REASONS hopefully won’t feel the need to succumb to peer pressure or act inappropriately to “be cool.”
STUDENT LEARNING IS ABOUT MORE THAN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT...BUT ACADEMICS BECOME EASIER IN A WELCOMING, SAFE ENVIRONMENT
If academic achievement and student learning are the main focus of your school community, I’d propose that students learn more easily in a welcoming environment that also focuses on their social-emotional wellness, rather than an environment where they feel they have to have their guard up around their peers or teachers. A welcoming classroom environment and positive relationships with their peers helps students maintain a desire for learning and a feeling of happiness while at school. Students may also feel more comfortable admitting when they don’t understand the content being taught—leading to improved academic support and performance. By the way, this is proven by research, but it’s also a no-brainer.
HAVING A PLACE WHERE WE BELONG CREATES A SAFETY-NET WHEN WE FACE LIFE’S CHALLENGES
My favorite quotation about belonging comes from Susan Lieberman, “By building relations, we create a source of love, personal pride, and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.” The meaningful relationships we have in our life allow us to withstand the challenges, set backs, and struggles in life. The more positive, supportive relationships we have, the stronger our lifelines and safety nets are for overcoming or making it through the tough parts of life. When we think about children, it’s my belief that the more safety nets we can put in place for them, the more people they have in their lives that they believe care about them, the more we set them up to have a successful, fulfilling life--and school should surely be a place where they receive acceptance and feel a sense of belonging as they learn to develop into their best selves.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS GO BEYOND SOCIAL SKILLS
A person can have good prosocial skills (like the ability to work with a team, share, be a helper), but not have strong relationships. WHOA! When I read this in All Learning is Social and Emotional (pgs 91-92), I knew right away it was true. The authors go on to say, “Relationships require another set of skills--communication, empathy, and methods for repairing relationships when they are damaged.” It’s important that we don’t simply expect our students to build working relationships with one another, but that we also place an importance on developing strong, caring, empathetic relationships and friendships. These kinds of relationships allow a sense of belonging to grow and deepen—and focusing on strengthening those connections can impact our students’ mental health, confidence, belief in themselves, positive actions towards others, and positive feelings towards school.
It’s important that we don’t take our students’ need to belong for granted!
In gathering my thoughts about why we should teach a sense of belonging in our classrooms, I consulted the following resources:
Students’ Sense of Belonging at School is Important. It Starts with Teachers (Evie Blad, Ed Week, June 2017)
All Learning is Social and Emotional: Helping Students Develop Essential Skills for the Classroom and Beyond by Dominique Smith, Douglas B. Fisher, and Nancy Frey
CASEL.org, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
So how can you begin to plan for “a sense of belonging” to be an important focus in your classroom this year?
If you feel that addressing your students’ sense of belonging and finding ways to make sure students feel more included by their peers is a difficult challenge, I encourage you to consider the power of bringing topics out into the open. It’s difficult to address things that we do not talk about openly. By teaching a unit on belonging, you set the foundation and establish an expectation that including one another and extending a sense of belonging to them is important, expected, and life-enriching. I feel that we as teachers have to take responsibility for our students’ sense of belonging while at school.
Teach lessons to introduce and address the concept of belonging with your students. My Belonging unit, including the bulletin board, lesson ideas, and student journal pages is free for my email list subscribers. I encourage you to download your free belonging unit to help you get started in this endeavor!
Ensure that all students know all classmate’s names. (Yes, this is something that I took for granted for a few years. Coming into a school where the grade-level numbers were small and most students had been together since kindergarten, I once assumed that all students knew one another’s names.) Be sure to include a number of activities centered around appreciating and learning students’ names--this includes ensuring that everyone, including you, knows how to pronounce ALL student names correctly. This shows that we value and honor our students, we see them, and their name is an important part of who they are. I love this free Name Tent idea by Mikey D. He uses this activity as students’ morning work on the first day of school.
Be sure that your read alouds and classroom libraries offer students mirrors (where students can reflect on their own identities and see themselves in literature) and windows (where students can develop a better understanding of cultures and experiences outside of their own). This list of diverse read alouds for your classroom is a great place to start.
Finally, remember that you as the teacher are a model for student behavior. In order for students to truly learn how to treat one another with caring and inclusivity, we must treat each and every student as a valuable member of our classroom community. By getting to know students’ interests on personal levels, treating them with respect, and communicating a warm, welcoming environment to caregivers and other staff, you model a world of belonging and acceptance for your students.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FIRST MORNING MEETING UNIT FREE!
This free theme unit is packed with lesson ideas, student journal pages, discussion prompts, self-reflections, bulletin board materials, and more. YES! Everything you see below for the belonging theme is FREE!
If you need resources for virtual morning meetings or remote learning, I’ve got you covered with Google Slides versions of each theme set. Grab your FREE slides for belonging here.
My morning meeting routine is based on themes in literature. My morning meeting model is a routine classroom experience that allows students the opportunity to develop personally, academically, and socially through the use of self-reflection, read alouds, songs, videos, quotations, key vocabulary, classroom discussions, and the teacher as a trusted guide.
Each element of the framework works to create a theme-study while at the same time teaching social emotional skills, character education, and strengthening the classroom community. The 5 phases of the framework include:
Exposure/Launching the Theme (without coming right out and telling students what the theme is)
Introducing the Theme, Self-Reflection, and Goal Setting
Student Discussion
Building the Theme
Consolidating Learning, Reflecting, and Creating Closure
Materials and resources for each of these components are included in each theme unit.
THEMES TO GUIDE YOUR MORNING MEETINGS ALL YEAR LONG
If you’d like more social emotional theme units with a focus on encouraging students’ social, emotional, and academic success, you may be interested in the Morning Meeting Mega Bundle of 17 theme units. With units focused on kindness, compassion, growth mindset, gratitude, perseverance, responsibility, managing emotions, and so much more, your engaging morning meeting plans are done for you and your students will love them! You can save 10% on the Mega Bundle of all 17 themes with the code MM10.
What ideas mentioned for teaching a sense of belonging would make the most impact with your students this year?
