We Are Not Us Without You: Teaching for Belonging

As a teacher working in international schools, I have often found myself in a classroom with students from all over the world. I’ve felt pride in the number of nations represented on the school website and the colourful celebrations of culture, clothing, flags, and food at our Uniting Nations Day. But does this diversity mean that we are an inclusive school? Do our students and families, faculty and staff, all feel that they equally belong in our community? 

Why Belonging Matters

Research consistently shows that a strong sense of belonging in school is linked to:

• Increased motivation and engagement
• Better academic performance
• Improved mental health and wellbeing

Factors that influence student belonging include:

• Relationships: positive and supportive relationships with teachers, peers and parents
• Identity:  individual traits such as self-efficacy,  gender, and learning needs 
• School climate: a safe and supportive school culture with fair policies 
• Extracurricular activities: a healthy balance of activities outside the classroom and academic studies

Students who experience a sense of belonging are more likely to want to come to school, feel connected, and contribute to their community.

From Tolerance to Belonging - a Shift in Mindset

Amy Julia Becker describes how our attitude towards diversity fits along a “Spectrum of Welcome:”

• Exclusion: “We don’t want you here.”
• Tolerance: “We’ll let you be here, but we won’t change anything.”
• Inclusion: “You can join us, but we prefer when you act like us.”
• Belonging: “We are not us without you.”

Belonging is the highest level of welcome. It acknowledges that every child has something valuable to offer and that our community is stronger when everyone can be their authentic selves. This shift in mindset requires teachers to reflect on their own biases and review their practices, materials, and interactions with students in order to create a classroom that allows for student identity and voice.

Skills that Foster Belonging

Belonging does not organically emerge in a classroom, despite good intentions.  It requires teaching, modelling, and practicing Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills that help students and educators develop empathy, awareness, and connection.

Key skills include:

• Demonstrating curiosity, empathy, and compassion
• Identifying and valuing cultural and linguistic assets
• Taking others’ perspectives
• Communicating across differences
• Standing up for the rights of others
• Reflecting on one’s own role in the community
• Recognizing strengths in others
• Managing emotions and resolving conflicts constructively

These skills and mindsets are essential in developing respectful relationships, open dialogue and mutual understanding. 

Strategies to Develop a Classroom of Belonging

1. Value the whole child: Encourage students to share their stories, backgrounds, and lived experiences with the class. This could include autobiographies, identity projects, cultural show-and-tell, and translanguaging. 

2. Representation matters: Review the resources you currently use. In what ways do students see themselves? Curate resources carefully to include the full range of human experience. Ensure you have diversity in genders, race, religion, abilities, nationalities, family structure, etc. This could include authors of texts, examples of scientists, athletes, or artists, images in presentations, names in scenarios, and holiday activities. Ask students, What am I missing?

3. Foster emotional safety: Create frequent opportunities to gauge how students are feeling and what they need to feel connected. Try using daily or weekly emotional check-ins, journaling, reflective questions, or discussion prompts to hear your students’ experiences. These simple tools build trust and connection over time. Don’t limit the get-to-know-you icebreakers to week one! 

4. Support neurodivergent learners: a classroom designed for belonging is flexible to all learners’ needs. Consider flexible seating, a quiet or calm corner, visual organisers and tools to support executive functioning, safe adult connections, and peer support networks.  These strategies benefit all learners, not just those with diagnosed learning differences.

5. Practice belonging as a skill: while we want students to feel that they belong, we also know that belonging is a shared responsibility that our students need to actively participate in. Plan units, lessons or learning activities that help students develop essential SEL skills and mindsets.  Use discussion routines like Agree– Disagree–Unsure to:

• Explore different perspectives
• Develop empathy
• Examine social norms or injustices
• Practice civil disagreement and listening

Even light-hearted versions such as “This or That” can build students' confidence and communication skills when discussing similarities and differences.

Designing for Belonging

The goal is to design for belonging. It’s not easy, and success is not guaranteed, but giving students a voice and a role to contribute to their community is worth the effort. For that to happen, educators must intentionally shift practices, resources, and relationships to welcome the identities and strengths of all learners.