BONUS: Coaching, Teaching, & Classroom Management Strategies Sparked From My Conversation with Erica Meltzer (❤️Olivia Wahl)

Why Belonging Matters: The Science Behind Inclusion in Education

Discover the science behind why belonging matters in education. Learn about inclusion strategies, diversity in schools, and how to boost student engagement.

In this bonus episode, I explore the critical concept of belonging in education and why creating inclusive environments is essential for both students and educators. 

Drawing from extensive research, I break down how genuine belonging significantly impacts academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being for everyone in school communities.

As education policy becomes increasingly politicized, understand why representation matters and how inclusive practices create spaces where all students can thrive as their authentic selves. 

Episode Mentions:

• The Instructional Playbook: The Missing Link for Translating Research Into Practice by Ann Hoffman, Jim Knight, and Michelle Harris 
• Belonging One-Pager (Sample)
• The Hattie Check and Visible Learning:
  • Teacher-student relationships  .62; Belonging .46
• The Extended Research Check:
  • Agents of Change: How Content Coaching Transforms Teaching and Learning by Lucy West and Antonia Cameron  (setting intentions)
  • Coaching A-Z: The Extraordinary Use of Ordinary Words by Haesun Moon: (V=value) and (W=Wonder)
  • The Thin Book of Trust, Third Edition: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work by Charles Feltman → (trust language) Chapter 1
  • Intro to Trust by Dan Newbie (layers of trust)
  • Brené Brown About Fitting in and True Belonging (YouTube short 37 seconds)
• Samantha Bennett’s Circles of Engagement
• The Importance of Representing Everyone in Today’s Classroom by Diana Brannon (2024)
• Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop (1990)

Make sure to listen to my full interview with Erica (Season 4, Episode 34) before diving into this bonus content!

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there. I'm so glad you're here. Your time is precious, and because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this episode. My conversation with Erica Meltzer of Chalkbeat focused on how Title VI of the Civil Rights Act has become a political battleground as the Trump administration attempts to reinterpret its meaning to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in schools.

In this bonus episode, I highlight why creating environments of genuine belonging in educational settings is essential for both students and educators to thrive emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively, and that this does require intentional practices that recognize value and include diverse identities and experiences.

You'll learn why belonging significantly impacts academic performance, mental health, and overall well-being. Why nurturing belonging requires a holistic approach that addresses [00:01:00] social, emotional, academic, and cultural needs; and why representation matters for belonging. Stay with me. I'm so happy to have you as a listener today.

This is Schoolutions Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl, and this is a bonus episode.

It's an accompaniment to my conversation with Erica Meltzer of Chalkbeat season 4, episode 34. And if you have not listened to that conversation, I strongly suggest you go back, you listen. Erica highlights why Title VI of the Civil Rights Act has become a political battleground. And how the Trump administration is attempting to reinterpret its meaning to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in [00:02:00] schools.

She speaks to recent legal injunctions and she also uplifts some research that shows that diversity initiatives like having black teachers and classrooms significantly improves outcomes for black students. For this episode, I really wanted to focus on what it means to belong. I want to focus on the word inclusion and think of what it means to include versus exclude.

And in my time in classrooms, in my time with school buildings, school districts, and just with any organization I've ever been employed by or served, thriving organizations do so because there is a sense of safety and a sense of belonging. Aand there's so much research to support the idea of belonging, feeling valued, trusted to make choices based on your knowledge.

And I thought it'd be helpful - I am going to be sharing a one-pager that I co-created with a coach a few months back and we were [00:03:00] having a conversation around how among her school staff it felt fractured a bit and it seemed like some teachers felt like they didn't belong and how that may be also having a ripple effect on students feeling like they didn't belong.

And so we thought, what better way than to use our coaching cycle time to create a one-pager. And a one-pager is based on Jim Knight's work with the Instructional Playbook and with the school district. We've been building an instructional playbook together and sharing it with other school districts and other buildings, other coaches, and it's just slowly, beautifully evolving.

And so I thought it'd be helpful to share this one-pager. The topic again is belonging. And the way this coach and I defined belonging in one sentence is: the extent to which students and teachers feel respected, included, accepted, and encouraged by others in the social environment of school.[00:04:00] 

So a one-pager, you need to break down that topic in one sentence, what it means to be true. We also dipped into John Hattie's research and did a Hattie check. Hattie's influences of teacher-student relationships along with belonging have high impacts on student learning. And we did some extended research that we've added to our one-pagers.

We looked at Agents of Change by Lucy West and Toni Cameron around setting intentions. It's pages 167 to 168. We dipped back into Coaching A to Z by Dr. Haesun Moon, and we focused on letter V for value and W for wonder. We included chapter one from Charles Feltman's book, the Thin Book of Trust around Trust Language.

We found an oldie but goodie in our files by Dan Newbie, the different layers of trust in his piece, Intro to trust. And we truly can't talk about belonging if we don't include some piece from [00:05:00] Brene Brown. And so we included a YouTube short, it's 37 seconds and it's Brené Brown about fitting in and true belonging.

Another section on our one-pager is called, What's the Point? We have a quote from Brene Brown, and then another couple of bullets that I'll share. The quote reads: “By fostering these principles of belonging, we can create spaces that are not only inclusive, but also empowering, where everyone can thrive as their authentic selves.”

And a second bullet that we've also included under What's the Point, is that belonging could also be called school connectedness. That this effective relationship to the culture of school has been shown to shape students' emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement with schooling. Those three layers of engagement are based on Samantha Bennett's work, and what I've learned from Sam over the years is that if we're only relying on behavioral engagement, that can also be disguised as compliance.

And these [00:06:00] days, we really don't want students that are just complying with what we're asking them to do necessarily. That’s why emotional engagement includes how is the student connected to themselves as a learner? How is the student connected to their teacher? How is the student connected to other students? And how is the student connected to the curriculum emotionally?

These are emotional factors that either enhance student engagement or get in the way of it. And then cognitive engagement, I now believe is one of the most important ways we know how to move forward with our instruction. In Sam's words: What are students saying? What are they doing? What are they writing down so that we understand how to offer them feedback and how we tailor our instruction for most, for some, and one-on-one based on what they're showing us that they know. 

A third bullet under What’s the Point?; well, when it comes to belonging, when students feel valued, supported, and connected, their academic performance [00:07:00] is enhanced along with their mental health, social development and overall well-being. And here's the thing, all of these under, What’s the Point, go back and forth with grownups and students.

So wherever you heard the word students, you could replace it with teachers because we should all feel valued, supported, and connected in order to thrive - whether we're in a school environment or not. And another facet of our one-pager is how will schools nurture belonging? Again, I think you could replace the word schools for organizations, for families. And here's what this coach and I came up with, that nurturing belonging in schools is an ongoing holistic process that involves creating an inclusive, supportive, and safe environment where students and teachers feel recognized, valued, and connected.

We also believe that schools can build a community where all students, regardless of their background, have the opportunity to thrive by addressing social, [00:08:00] emotional, academic, and cultural needs. So that was how schools can nurture, belonging, that bigger organizational aspect. And then we go on to consider how teachers can nurture and benefit from belonging.

And here's what we wrote. Teachers will gather data from student interactions, engagement, emotional well-being, and academic performance to reflect on and adjust their teaching practices. Teachers will try new practices publicly and be willing to take risks with their colleagues. This could be in the form of learning labs.

This could be through coaching cycles. This could be from teachers going into each other's rooms and watching each other teach and having students see grownups as learners alongside them as learners. And then we go on. How will students benefit from belonging? Hopefully by districts and schools and classrooms creating this environment of belonging, we would see [00:09:00] behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement increasing.

We could measure that through our coaching cycles. We would see students developing empathy for others and that they feel seen when their family’s cultures are recognized and celebrated as well. And then we also build a checklist for belonging of what we would want to see and hear in classrooms. I think it's really important to highlight that this checklist isn't a gotcha.

It's not something that we would walk through classrooms and say, yes, this is here or no, it's not. It's really a guide and it's co-created not just with coaches, but with teachers, with the people that have children in their care. Here are some of the aspects that we included on our checklist, and we wanted to make sure to include what we would see in here within schools.

What we would see in here with teachers and what we would see in here with students. So we said schools would celebrate the diversity within their caregivers’ or [00:10:00] family’s cultures. Schools would offer opportunities for learning and connection around their caregiver or family’s cultural backgrounds.

Teachers would create an inclusive, welcoming environment within their classrooms. Teachers would ensure that the learning environments feel safe and respectful. Teachers would acknowledge all students' assets, contributions, and achievements. And then this is what we would hopefully be able to see and hear with our students. That students are engaged behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively, that students attend school regularly because they feel connected, that students express feelings of happiness and contentment when talking about school.

So again, this is a one-pager that I co-created with a coach during her coaching cycle, and I will tuck that into the show notes as well as the research that we chose. But you create your own one-pager [00:11:00]. Think of what's the point of belonging. And at the heart of what I believe belonging to be about is when we feel included, we care about our community.

Divisiveness looks for exclusion. It seeks out anger, it seeks out loneliness. It seeks out sadness and feeds upon it. And so the idea of belonging is a counter act. It's loving, it's caring, it's tending, and that's what I want to focus on, not just in the world of education, but as a community member, as a caregiver moving forward.

It's also critical to make sure that our students have representation in today's classroom. There's a piece by Diana Brannon that I read in January of 2024. It feels like a lifetime ago. And I think a lot of the points she makes still [00:12:00] resonates so strongly. She says, “A majority of children in the United States spend their formative years in a classroom. This is where many children are exposed for the first time to diversity of the world around them. Through their interactions with others and the curriculum, children develop a greater understanding of both themselves and others and hopefully learning the importance of representing everyone.”

And she goes on to say, “Therefore, the classroom is an important place for helping children understand and value diversity, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. These discussions need to begin with young children, considering that researchers have found that three to five year olds not only categorize race, but express racial bias. Children of color as young as preschool, show evidence of being negatively impacted by stereotypes about their race.”

And here is a reality check. “Today, many children are living in single parent households is divorce, remarriage [00:13:00] and cohabitation are all on the rise. Four out of every ten babies born are to single women or women living with non-marital partners. The number of children living in poverty continues to rise, and the number of children growing up in LGBTQ+ families has increased dramatically over the past few years.”

Diana highlights that “Furthermore, over half of public school students come from families of color, many of whom do not speak English in the home. These are just a few of the realities about the lives of America's children that need to be reflected. Not just in children's literature, but in the teachers that are teaching them.”

And that it's such a good reminder that our children need literature in their classrooms to provide mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. And so I'll end this bonus episode with a beautiful quote from Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop that Diana uplifts. “We need diverse books because all our children deserve to know that they have a voice in the choir that sings the Song of America.” [00:14:00] 

Dr. Bishop wrote this more than 25 years after her groundbreaking essay, Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors, And this quote from Dr. Bishop continues, “When diversity is absent from the literature we share with children, those who are left out in fur, that they're undervalued in our society and those whose lives are constantly reflected, gain a false sense of their own importance.”

Let's work together to make sure that everyone in our lives, everyone in our classrooms, everyone in our school buildings, and our organizations feel like they belong, that they feel loved and seen and heard, and that we continue to nurture that sense of safety amongst our communities.

Thanks for listening, and I can't wait to see you next week. Take care. 

Schoolutions Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and [00:15:00] listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. 

Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know how your organization, your family, your school, or your district works to create a feeling of belonging. 

Tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guests that week. See you then.