Teach & Serve IV, No. 6
Belonging
September 12, 2018
As leaders in our institutions, we bear responsibility for ensuring that our schools place a premium on our constituents feeling they belong. Very little good happens when people are on the outside looking in.
It is not new anymore, is it?
We can deny it if we wish, but the school year is not just upon most of us, it is rocketing forward. In the midst of all we must do as educational leaders – designing curriculum, going to meetings, greeting new staff members and students, getting our LMS up and running, figuring out where our new parking spot is – there is something else to which we ought to pay definite attention to: belonging.
As we begin a new year, we begin to discover where we belong in it. No year is just like the one that came before nor is it like the one that will come after. Each is distinct and different and the role we play and the space we occupy within it is different, too. Spending time considering where we belong and where we want to in the hustle of all that happens in the early weeks of the year is going to mean much for how our year proceeds. Establishing our beachhead, our belonging in the context of the school is most important. It creates safety and comfort and it is somewhere from which we can build a successful year.
Even more important than considering our belonging is nurturing the belonging of those around us. Our students, our staffs, our teachers, our parents, all of them must feel they belong, too. Part of the responsibility we have to the overall community is to help them feel they are important, that they are parts of this great whole.
That they belong.
As leaders in our institutions, we bear responsibility for ensuring that our schools place a premium on our constituents feeling they belong. Very little good happens when people are on the outside looking in. People cannot pull in the same direction if they do not have a hand on the rudder or a place in the boat. People will not buy into any mission or message if they do not feel it applies to them.
People will not love the school if they first do not feel as though they belong.
Prioritize belonging and all that is good will follow.