Category: education
-
Birthdays, Anniversaries….Significance and Love.
There’s something deeply human about remembering. Not just facts or tasks, but the dates that mark someone’s life. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, the day someone got a new job, graduated, or became a parent, the day someone lost a loved one. Remembering these dates is more than calendar-management — it is an outward sign, a gentle…
-
Sonder
In my previous blog, The Business of Belonging, I explored Rhodes Perry’s work—particularly as highlighted in his Forbes interview—where he describes the practice of building cultures of belonging with intentionality, humility, and courage. In that piece, Perry briefly references a word that has stayed with me since: Sonder. A word that quietly names something many…
-
Belonging in Primary Schools: Helping every child feel at home through our new school audit tool Welcome, Connect, Belong
A Guest Blog by Kelly Earnshaw Why belonging matters In primary schools, belonging is the bedrock of learning. These are the years when children take their first steps into education, form their earliest friendships and begin to see themselves as learners. If a child feels they don’t fit in—whether that’s being left out on the…
-
The Dog Who Learned Through Love.
A short fable about relational education. A puppy, beaten and neglected, was brought at last to a rescue home. Its body healed, but its heart still trembled at every sound. One day, a man came to adopt it. At first, he spoke kindly, but when the dog chewed his shoes through fear and confusion, the…
-
The Language of Belonging
In my last blog, I talked about using a language of Love over Respect and Tolerance. Since then, I have been reflecting on the language of belonging in a more general sense. In schools, and life, every interaction we have, and the language we use to frame that interaction, has an impact on our feeling…
-
Why I’m no longer talking about Respect (or Tolerance.)
The value of Respect is one that you will find across cultures, across institutions and across countries. The United Nations identified it as one of the top 10 values shared across cultures and Gocke (2021) identified it as fifth in the core values necessary in education, as identified by future educators. But why? What does…
-
Belonging as the Key Agent in Social Justice.
Last week, The Times ran a particularly interesting article on student belonging at Edinburgh University. The article, linked here, reports that the university has written to all of their students asking them not to ridicule their peers that may have come to University from poorer backgrounds. Their more privileged students, who are in the majority,…
-
The Dark Side of Belonging
Helping students to find their sense of belonging is not all about test scores and performance outcomes. It is proven to impact these, as outlined in my previous blog The Belonging Bonus, but this should not be the reason for our focus. If belonging is something that we all seek, (Maslow 1943) and we don’t…
-
Belonging and Cognitive Load Theory.
When I first started this blog page, I had a great response from the brilliant Aimee Tinkler asking how I thought belonging might affect the learners brain in the classroom and whether developing a strong sense of belonging in our students might release additional mental capacity for learning? This is a great question, and one…
-
My Best Bets for Belonging .
As the new term begins, it is vital that we get off on the right foot, making sure that from day one, all of our students, old and new, feel a connection with us that will activate their sense of belonging. By doing this, we can make sure that our schools are a positive environment…
The Belonging Collective 