Beyond Teaching Trends & Window Stickers: Creating a literal safe space, in which all students belong.
unfinished draft from the pandemic vault
“A strong sense of belonging translates to students of all ages and developmental stages improving academically, being more engaged and motivated in school, and increasing their physical and emotional health.”
--Sarah Miles, MSW, PhD, Director of Research and Programs for Challenge Success [quoted in NAASP Principal Leadership Oct.2020 issue]
Notes from my process:
I was inspired by the article from which that quote was taken.
I was already thinking a lot (and writing a little) about the experiences of my students and their families once we were all sent home on March 13, 2020.
I felt compelled to write my own thoughts down on the topic.
I came up with a lofty title to anchor myself in the writing, and I started.
Beyond Teaching Trends & Window Stickers: Creating a literal safe space, in which all students belong.
A sense of belonging at school sounds like:
I can really be myself at this school.
I feel accepted at this school.
Other students here like me the way that I am.
Belonging, Mastery, Independence, Generosity:
These are the four universal needs of children, according to an indigenous concept known as a Circle of Courage. At my very first school home, my very first semester since completing the requirements for a preliminary teaching credential in California, I readily embraced this model presented in the first staff meeting, discussed in department and grade-level meetings, and promoted on hallway and classroom walls. I was all in. We English teachers created and assigned writing prompts relevant to the concepts throughout the month of September. In our Advisory classes, students created their own graphic displays and interpretive performances. It was a schoolwide thing; we were all on board.
And then…
…we settled back into our common pacing guides and carried on with the curriculum.
For us English teachers, this meant onto reading Steinbeck, Bradbury, Fitzgerald, or Shakespeare, depending on your assigned grade level. Our first-quarter reading discussions were peppered with references to some character’s sense of belonging or lack thereof, or conflict centered on gaining one’s independence. But by semester’s end, the mental sticky-note to continue making these “meaningful connections” for students lost its stick and blew under a desk somewhere, as I worked to finish the book, give the benchmark, and complete grades in time. Logistics took over, and it felt like some sort of failure on my part.
This was an early clue that the system was broken, full of platitudes and acronyms, and a new colored binder for every change in administrative direction. I taught for two years at that comprehensive high school and then thirteen more at a small public charter school, where it was more realistic to be able to connect with each of our students because we weren’t so vastly outnumbered by them. Again, logistics. *ick*
I am writing in the first days of 2022, and uncertainties abound in education, as always, and in so many new ways in this “new normal” we have yet to define. It would be a challenge to find public school students who have not faced some sort of adversity since March, 2020. We are back in the classroom, and the kids are not alright. They are not comfortable in their own skin. It’s uncomfortable to watch some of them, and they’re quite mean to each other now, in a way that really concerns me for their long-term health and well-being.
I’ve been the snack teacher for a while now, directing the hungry ones to my bottom desk drawer to see what I’ve got for them, and I’ve scrounged for change at the bottom of my purse to help them buy Cup a Noodles. Now my wife gets boxes of Kirkland granola bars and fruit snacks for me to keep under my desk. I’ve opted to leave be more than one sleeping student who’s been lulled by an audiobook, my read-aloud, or a TED Talk in a darkened room because so many of them zombie-walk through their days on limited sleep. (btw…I disdain the barbaric act of dropping a textbook onto the desk beneath a slumbering student’s head.) I embrace the hierarchy of needs as the non-negotiable reality that it is, and now it seems very clear that foundational needs are not being met outside of school, but schools are still expecting the same output from students. It’s complicated, and it’s also not.
I am not the same teacher I was pre-COVID, pre-Zoom, pre-hybrid, pre-masked teaching. My students have always been my reason to show up every morning, but the amount that I worry about them has increased exponentially, and I think it’s changed my energy in the classroom for the better. I have early feedback that supports my notion that I am on the right track—most of my students feel a connection, a sense of belonging, and that I care about them as students and as people. (Google Form anonymous student survey was given at the end of 2020-2021 and at the end of S1 2021-2022).
[Almost two years later, and so many things have continued to change. I’m trying to stay connected to young people now that I am no longer teaching. So far, I have a LEGOs at lunch gig at my former school.]