by Amanda Wall

What do a daily classroom greeting, journal entries asking students how they celebrate particular holidays, essays comparing Greek gods to modern celebrities, and a Latin project featuring mushrooms and done in the style of Edward Gorey have in common? They all relate to ways of fostering student belonging in the middle grades.

In This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents, the Association for Middle Level Education proposes that for schools to adequately serve tweens and young teens, they must be developmentally responsive, challenging, empowering, and equitable. The concept of belonging relates to all four. Here, I’d like to consider what it means for middle graders to belong and for educators to create a sense of “belonging” for every student. I’ll also share some of my research among North Carolina teachers.

It’s all about membership

In a nutshell, belonging is related to our need to have affiliation and to be a member of communities, such as a family, a peer group, a classroom, or a school. We can think of belonging in terms of two main aspects:

• frequent inter-personal contacts and interactions, and

• the perception of bonds or relationships that have stability, affective concern, and the likelihood of ongoing interaction. (Baumeister and Leary)

In the words of one of the youth in Elizabeth Moje’s landmark study, belonging encompasses a need “to be part of the story.”

Any person feels the need to belong, and the middle grades are a time when young adolescents are exploring who they are and who they want to be and become. Part of their exploration of their identities involves their need for belonging in a range of groups and settings.

Teachers help create a sense of belonging

Teachers can support students’ belonging in school. One hallmark of the middle school model is Advisory, a program that gives every student an adult advocate. Teachers, acting as advisors, can give each advisee a safe place within the school community.

Many middle schools start the day with Advisory. That time — even if it is only ten minutes — is a great way to ground each student in the school day by sharing a short greeting, giving reminders and announcements, and/or posing a question or topic for brief discussion. The question can be serious or frivolous; it can be school-related, community-related, or a question about life, the universe, and everything. The goal is for students to interact, share their views, and listen respectfully.

In these ways, Advisory can give every student a place at school. What is important is that teachers have a thoughtful approach to Advisory and specific, well-articulated goals. Programs highlighted in the online ASCD Express newsletter recently (“Who’s Afraid of Student Advisory?”) show that there are many ways to craft an effective Advisory program- and many approaches take students belonging into account.

In The Advisory Book, (an excellent resource, now in a second edition), Linda Crawford reports on a review of research on Advisory that showed that students in Advisory programs — in comparison to students who did not have Advisory or a parallel school-based program — improved significantly in social-emotional skills and attitudes about themselves, others, and school (two components that relate to student belonging).

AMLE also has a report of research to support Advisory; while this 2006 brief is a little dated, it is thorough and still pertinent.

Two model Advisory programs

Two programs deserve a special mention when it comes to Advisory.

Developmental Designs for Middle School, created by the non-profit organization Origins, integrates the academic curriculum with a social-emotional curriculum to support young adolescents. Through the DDMS model, schools work to provide for students’ needs for autonomy, competence, relationships, and fun. A focus on any of these areas — especially relationships — can foster a sense of belonging for students.

(Origins is also the Midwestern provider of Responsive Classroom, a compatible model for the elementary grades. Both models involved fee-based workshops and school services.)

Educators for Social Responsibility (also a non-profit) supports an Advisory model in middle school (and high school!) through its fee-based services. One notable example is ESR’s involvement in establishing advisory in 10 Austin TX schools. For ESR, one characteristic of a strong Advisory is that it creates community through gatherings, rituals, and routines. Gatherings can be informal morning meetings, or they can relate to academic tasks. Rituals and routines are a meaningful way that teachers can foster belonging through shared practices.

You never know what may spur a ritual. Years ago, when my former school implemented student-led conferences, my advisees worked diligently to assemble their portfolios. They had great conversations with their parents and had many keen insights into their learning. After that first round, I congratulated my advisory kids and we all decided to chip in a couple of dollars each and order pizza to eat together at lunch one day. When other advisories learned about our feast, they all wanted to do something similar. Fast forward a couple of years, and the Advisory Lunch has become a school-wide tradition. A ritual! Smaller routines, such as Current Event Monday or a Thursday morning “Modern Family” (or other popular show) recap, are also high-engagement activities.

Without question, Advisory is a great avenue for supporting student belonging. But it’s not the only avenue. Teachers can support student belonging informally through repeated, seemingly small gestures. I have known many teachers who make it a goal of each day to look each student in the eyes and to greet each student by name. With multiple, large classes during the day, teachers may find this a challenging task, but it is rewarding and meaningful for students.

Student ownership of learning

Academic tasks can also support student belonging. Beverly Faircloth has done research about tasks that can “harness” students’ search for belonging and identity development with the academic curriculum. Working with high school students, she found three characteristics of tasks that can support belonging and identity development: (1) the task makes connections with students’ lives and perspectives beyond school; (2) the task blends school requirements with individual perspectives and ideas; (3) the task is grounded in the curriculum.

Middle grades teachers can adapt these guidelines and present academic tasks that allow students to voice their own ideas, opinions, and perspectives while learning. Here are some ways I combined academics and socio-emotional development in my own classroom.

As a teacher of Latin, I often assigned vocabulary poster projects to help students understand the relationships between Latin (or Greek) words and English words. One of the guidelines for this type of assignment was that students incorporate the actual meaning of the words into their poster designs.

The Monster Book of Monsters

My middle schoolers often included aspects of their own personalities and identities into their graphic treatments. A Harry Potter fan who made a poster about English derivatives of the Greek word for “book” designed her poster to look like “The Monster Book of Monsters” (learn more at the Harry Potter Wiki) from Prisoner of Azkaban. A swimmer who did a poster about English derivatives of the Greek and Latin words for “water” chose a blue posterboard, designed it to look like lanes in a pool, and added a couple of her award ribbons. A James Bond aficionada took the conceptual word “skill” and made the poster look like James Bond at a cards table.

And in case you were wondering about the mushroom project mentioned in my introduction: I once assigned seventh graders to do an Alphabet Book-styled project on a category of Latin words. Many students selected animals or items in a house. Two students who were fans of Edward Gorey decided to select various ways that a person could die as their ABC project. They selected male names for each letter of the Latin alphabet and wrote about how each of these men died at the hands of nefarious mushrooms.

Why mushrooms? Earlier in their seventh-grade year, in response to one of their queries, I asked them if they wanted to do an extra-credit report about the death of the Roman Emperor Claudius. They found that he may have been poisoned by mushrooms. And just like that, they featured mushrooms in every Latin project they did for two years. They expected it of themselves, and their classmates were always eager to see how they had managed to include mushrooms in their latest effort. Their fixation with this motif came from a random question but grew into a way that they harnessed their own quirks in their academic work. For what it’s worth, each project was outstanding — the mushrooms became a “ritual,” and their excitement for the topic served as a bonding agent for themselves and their colleagues.

The examples above are all summative assessments; daily assignments also can support belonging by allowing students to make connections between school and their own lives and personal interestes. As a teacher of Language Arts, I assigned students a Daily Composition Book. Oftentimes, the topic of the day was for students to relate a specific literary or other idea to their lives or to give an example from their lives of a specific topic from school. In this way, their routine practice of writing helped build the school-to-life connection and, I believe, their feeling that they were in a place where they belonged and had ownership.

My own research

In my recent graduate research, I asked middle school teachers for their thoughts about three domains of motivation: expectancy (Can I do this?), value (Do I want to?), and belonging (Do I belong?). Teachers explained why they thought belonging was important: to help students feel safe, to allow students to be who they are, and to show them that we as teachers care.

I also asked teachers to rank each of the three domains by the key questions above. Almost half of the respondents rated belonging as most important! Many elaborated that belonging was related to a student’s perceptions of being able to do the work and meet academic expectations. One teacher stated that she thought expectancy (Can I do this?) and belonging were, in a sense, reciprocal: when students feel like they can do the work in a class or in a school, that increases their sense of belonging — and when students feel like they belong in a class or in a school, that enhances their belief that they can handle the academic challenges. Another teacher wrote that it was very important for her to show students that she cared and that they all had a place in her class and in the school.

Also related to motivation is Kevin Cokley’s research on motivation among African-American college students. In one study of African-American students in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly White Colleges and Universities (PWCUs), Cokley found that encouragement played a great role in students’ motivation. That finding has stayed with me in terms of any student’s need to be encouraged.

When we encourage students, we are telling them, “You can do it. I believe in you. You belong here.” It takes only a moment to give a student a specific comment and to encourage that student. It takes only a little more effort to make that human connection and begin to create a community where we can all belong.

Notes:

• Rafe Esquith’s book Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire is not about motivation specifically, but it is an excellent and inspiring book for all teachers in terms of motivation and many other ideas. This Scholastic article includes a short interview with Esquith (a fifth grade teacher in inner city Los Angeles) and shares some of his thoughts about building trust in your classroom.

• Another great recent resource is MiddleWeb’s Research Roundup “Insights into Student Motivation,” compiled by co-editor Susan B. Curtis, who gathers together a useful collection of online resources about motivation as a broad topic.

Amanda Wall taught Latin and Writing in high school and middle school. She is now a doctoral candidate in teacher education at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she particularly enjoys studying motivation and working with the next generation of fantastic middle school teachers.

Bill Ivey is Middle School Dean at all-girl Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Greenfield MA, where he also teaches Humanities 7, French, and the Middle and Upper School Rock Bands. Bill is the advisor for MOCA, the middle school student government, and he coordinates and participates in the middle school service program. We also recommend Bill’s earlier post for MiddleWeb about stereotyping, Hungering for a Better World.

by Bill Ivey

“You are not special. You are not exceptional.”

Maybe you’ve heard about the “You’re not special” graduation speech given by David McCullough, Jr. to the Class of 2012 of Wellesley (MA) High School. In fact, it’s likely you have. The speech quickly went viral. (McCullough is a teacher at the school and the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.)

Initially, it was kind of fun, especially since my nephew was in that graduating class. I’d see a retweet, or a link would come through on Facebook, and I’d write back “Thanks for sharing. Great speech. My nephew was actually one of the graduates that day.” But over time, it began to be a bit irritating. When a forwarded email appeared in my inbox with the subject header, “The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER; and most Honest Graduation Speech, EVER,” something snapped. Maybe it was the phrase “most honest,” or the all-caps “EVER.”

For the record, I certainly don’t mind personally being told I’m not special (although I’d prefer it if you were gentle about it). But don’t go saying it about my students, and don’t go saying it about my family.

Who is special?

When I first heard about the speech, it took me back to my Humanities 7 classroom this year and a question one of the students asked. It’s a question very much on kids’ minds, as this is at least the third time it’s come up over the seven years I’ve taught the class. “Bill, people are always telling us we’re special. But if everyone is special, doesn’t that mean that no one is special?”

What might David McCullough have said to that question if asked by one of his own students? What clues lie in the text of his speech? Part of his answer might lie in the evidence he gave to support his central thesis.

Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools. That’s 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000 class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs.

He points out that if you are one in a million, that simply means “there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.” Referring to Walt Whitman and Epictetus, he concedes we are each our own personal version of perfection and we each have the spark of Zeus, concluding nonetheless, “You see, if everyone is special, then no one is.”

But that would only be part of the answer. He continues to state that “we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.” And the true core of his speech is less about who you are than what you do and how you do it. Your life is what you make of it.

“I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. (…) Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. (…) The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement… what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. (…) Carpe the heck out of the diem. (…) The great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.”

In short, Mr. McCullough might answer my student’s question by saying, “You’re not special. Because everyone is. So as you go through life, carpe the heck out of the diem. Make something of your life.”

We make each other special

In a way, then, my response to Mr. McCullough’s speech may be exactly what he might want. I am loving my students, my family, with all my might. I’m well aware that there are teachers in every school who believe their students are special, and relatives everywhere who believe their families are special. And you know what? We’re all right.  Because we have made it so. Like the fox and the prince in Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” we have tamed each other — to each other, we are unique in all the world.

I remember one of the hardest lessons I learned in the years following my own high school graduation: there actually is no finish line that delineates adulthood. We continue to be works in progress throughout our lives. For each member of my school community, Stoneleigh-Burnham’s mission “to be your own best self” doesn’t end on graduation day. It’s something that continues throughout our lives. Special though we may be, we are continually defining who we are by our actions; we must consciously and continually work to be our own best selves.

My answer to my student cut to the chase

So what was my own answer to my student’s question about being special? We must have had something awfully pressing to do that day, at least in my mind, because rather than responding with a question of my own as I normally would, I cut quickly to the chase and simply told her: “It’s a great question. Personally, I’ve come to think that we are all special in that there is only one of each of you. There is no one else anywhere like you — and because of that fact, none of us is more special than anyone else.”

She smiled and nodded, and we all moved on.

And if so, perhaps “the sweetest joys of life” come not exactly “with the recognition that you’re not special” but rather with the recognition that we all are equally special. My students, my family. And me. And you.

Jenny Luca is a middle grades teacher and librarian currently working as Director of Information Services at Toorak College, a secondary school in Mt.Eliza (outskirts of Melbourne) Australia. She’s an internationally respected education blogger at Lucacept: Intercepting the Web. This post originally appeared at the Powerful Learning Practice group blog Voices from the Learning Revolution. She presented on this work at the ISTE 2012 conference in San Diego.

by Jenny Luca

I work in an Independent School in Melbourne, Australia, and this past year we made a commitment to help our students (grades 7-12) create ePortfolios, using an Edublogs campus as the platform. Here are 5 reasons why we are making student blogging and portfolio development a high priority.

1. Positive digital footprints

These kids need to establish a positive digital footprint. Without question, it will be the norm for these students to be Googled when they begin to seek employment. Even employment of the part time variety! They need to cultivate their personal brand, and we can help them by encouraging them to post about the great things they are involved in at school. This can reflect what they are learning in their classrooms, or it can be a discussion of the co-curricular activities they enjoy. We want our students to understand that they can control the message about them that exists on the Web, and they can point prospective employers, colleagues or university admissions officers towards a digital footprint that they themselves have created when the time is right.

2. Communicating with digital tools

We want our students to have a handle on how you use digital tools for communication purposes, and not just through networks like Facebook. Plenty of our students are Facebook users, but there is a higher order skill set required to maintain consistent posts in a blog. We’ve taught our students how to set up categories, add widgets, use the HTML editor to embed code, and even how to tell the difference between a legitimate comment and someone who is spamming you. As our world moves ever more closely towards the Internet as the main vehicle for communication, we feel that we are helping our students understand the language they will need to navigate this new territory.

3. Transparency for parents and family

Our curriculum is becoming more transparent for our parent population. As our students write more and more about their learning, we now have a means for our parents to feel more connected to what happens at school. Where once a child would write for an audience of one – their teacher – now they are writing for a potentially much larger audience that includes their immediate and extended family. When you see a grandparent leave a comment on a child’s blog, it brings a bit of a tear to your  eye!

Just think, these students will have a digital archive of their learning, but not only that, they will have comments from friends and family members that they can revisit in years to come. Their access won’t be limited to the box of cherished school records and momentos at the top of the bedroom cupboard. For these kids, an internet connection will enable them to pull up their account from anywhere and revisit their childhood and adolescent school years.

4. New ways of thinking about Web tools

We need a digital space to demonstrate new methods of learning using Web tools. Already this year, our student ePortfolios have been used to embed Slideshare and Google Docs presentations, Glogsters, podcasts created with Garageband, Google MyMaps, Prezi’s and links to Wiki pages they have edited for differing subject areas. Just having our students understand how to hyperlink to other people’s content, and the potential this opens for two-way conversation, has been eye opening for them. These spaces have helped provide even more reasons for our teaching staff to utilize Web based tools and teach themselves new skills in the process.

5. Effective digital citizenship

The ePortfolios support our commitment to assist our students with the skills they need for effective digital citizenship. We are having the conversations we need to have about how you conduct yourself in digital spaces in the context of our curriculum, and not in isolated lecture style presentations that may hit a chord with some students, but miss the mark with others. When I talk to my 7th grade students, they can clearly articulate why it is we are using these ePortfolios. It makes sense to them, and they know it is important for their future lives. Believe you me, when a student tells you they need a really good digital footprint, it makes you feel like you’ve earned your keep that week!

Amazing or what?

I know I said I’d give you 5 reasons, but I can’t resist adding a very important 6th. For many of our students, their world view is changing as a result of posting in public spaces. Many of them have embedded clustr maps into their sidebars, and they can see where people are visiting from. Recently, one of our year seven students posted about the effect this global audience has had on her.

“Okay- so this is amazing.

I’ve used this blog since March 30th and so far it’s been a great resource and an amazing display of some of my work this year. It hasn’t just been my teachers, my classmates, my family and I that have looked at it- as of August 6 my blog has had 533 visits worldwide.

Amazing or what? WOW.”

Wow indeed.

photo: pixelsrzen, CC