Making Sure Every Child in School Feels Known

Each year, as her school’s fifth graders prepare for the big transition to middle school, Principal Ryan Daniel asks them to reflect on their time at Fort Foote Elementary.

Invariably, students say something along the lines of, “I feel like I belong here,” Daniel says. “There is somebody that misses me if I’m not here. There is somebody that checks in on me. I have teachers that I’m going to remember forever.”

The importance of school belonging cannot be overstated. “The desire to be accepted is a core human need,” and it plays a critical role in students’ academic success and social and emotional well-being, says noted author and psychologist David Yeager. Without a sense of connection, students may struggle to muster the motivation to keep going as the learning becomes more rigorous and demanding. Research bears this out: When college students rated the statement “I feel like there’s a place for me here at my college” on a scale of one to five, their response predicted retention “better than a slew of other predictors, including high school GPA,” explains Stanford psychologist Geoffrey Cohen. “So belonging, the sense that this place is a home, can be a real catalyst for health and achievement and growth.”

But real belonging doesn’t just happen by accident. When students feel connected and respected, it’s the result of a concerted, intentional effort by the adults in a school’s ecosystem, says Daniel. “That means every adult who comes into contact with a student, whether directly or indirectly, plays a role in shaping that feeling.” Among the leaders we interviewed, all agreed that the responsibility has to be shared by every adult in the building, and it starts at the very top. “As leaders, part of our job is that we’re modeling what we expect,” says Crystal Caballero, a middle school assistant principal. “I used to think that you should announce whatever your mission is, but I’m learning that you have to just embody it.”

We spoke to leaders from Minnesota to Maryland about how they’re working alongside staff to build the sorts of robust relationships that make every student feel like they belong at school.

Setting The Tone First Thing: Each morning, when Daniel opens the front school doors, a small crowd is already waiting—eager young faces pressed up against the glass, bouncing on their tippy toes and waving.

Between Daniel, the school’s mental health therapist, and one rotating staff member, they greet every child by name as they walk in. Each adult is prepared for hugs and high-fives, but also keenly watching for the child who needs someone to notice they’re struggling and pull them aside for a quick check-in. For many students, it’s their second greeting of the morning, following a hearty honk and hello from their bus driver. Together, this important group ensures that students enter the school building knowing an adult is happy to see them and available to support them should they need it.

“I know how I feel when I go into a space and somebody is greeting me,” Daniel says. “I can tell that this is a place that was preparing for me to come in. That’s the feeling that I want to give students when they walk in every morning: I may have had a rough morning or missed the bus, but I’m here now and it’s going to be a great day.”

Starting the Day Together: Each day before classes begin, Caballero is in the cafeteria with her roughly 150 middle school students who arrive early for school breakfast. For the first 15 minutes, students eat and socialize while Caballero and a school counselor circulate, welcoming and chatting with kids.

In previous years, breakfast would be followed by about “eight minutes doing some sort of SEL activity, and we’d wrap up our time together with an affirmation.” This year, Caballero uses post-breakfast minutes to share a scenario and ask students to match it to one of the four agreements that unite them as a school community: Always do your best, be impeccable with your word, don’t make assumptions, and don’t take things personally. “I’ll ask, ‘How many agreements do we have?’ They're like, ‘Four!’ And I’ll say, “Say it in Spanish. Say it in French. Say it in Farsi.”

This half hour spent with students each day allows Caballero to get to know students and build a vital sense of connection and purpose—while providing her teachers a bit of additional prep time before class.

Mapping Who You Know (and Don’t): When Roberta Duvall was the principal at Cold Springs Middle School, she set an ambitious goal: 100 percent of the school’s students would feel connected to a teacher in the building.

To track the effort, teachers gathered in the library as Duvall led a teacher-student–connection poster activity. On a large printout of the school’s student roster taped to the wall, staff used markers to indicate via check mark how well they knew each student, in columns labeled Name/Face, Something Personal, Personal/Family Story, and Academic Standing. While scanning the list of names, teachers worked collaboratively to paint a clear picture of each student. “Delaney is allergic to red food dye,” one teacher said aloud. “And she also has a pond that she swims in,” another teacher added.

This reflective process, even after only a month and a half of school, clearly revealed students who were known or only partially known by the adults—and, most important, kids who were the least anchored to the school community. Next, staff brainstormed and developed an action plan for reaching even the most disconnected students.

Showing Up for Students in Need: Every student experiences belonging differently, and for some, an additional point of connection with a trusted adult can make a big difference.

When she was a middle school principal, Jessica Cabeen, now principal of alternative programming in Austin, Minnesota, would ask the secretary for a list of the 20 students from the prior year who had had the most challenging year. “That was either by truancy or behavior referrals, pass/fail courses, or something really traumatic happened in their life,” she says. Throughout summer break, she’d visit all 20 students at home, getting to know them and their caregivers. Then, during the first month of school, she’d intentionally interact with those same students, twice for 20 minutes at a time: checking in on them in class or at lunch, even sending home a positive note or calling families to deliver good news. “We saw a huge decrease in behavior referrals and an increase in credit attainment just by identifying and knowing those kids and showing up for them in a positive light,” Cabeen says.

In a similar effort to catch at-risk kids before they fell through the cracks, Spanish teacher Kimberly Radostits created an after-school mentorship program, staffed by a small cohort of educators. Zeroing in on the 15 percent of incoming students most at risk of not graduating on time, the Hawks Take Flight program gathers each Wednesday, with the option of additional one-on-one support. “Many of those students didn’t really need homework help,” Radostits tells EdWeek. “What they needed was just an adult who believed in them.”

Lunch Bunch With the Principal: As an elementary student, Principal Rachel Edoho-Eket fondly remembers earning pizza parties for good behavior with her school’s principal, Mr. Slacum. Inspired by that childhood memory, she started weekly Lunch Bunches once she became an administrator.

She began by asking several paraprofessionals to nominate a few students who were following the rules so she could have lunch with them. Word spread, and soon other students were asking if they could have lunch with the principal. Now, as part of the school’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports system, students can cash in tickets they earn for good behavior to join a future Lunch Bunch.

Conversations are usually unrelated to school, bouncing from students’ favorite foods and hobbies to what they might do over the weekend. Edoho-Eket does ask students who their favorite teachers are, so she can pass along the compliment, but “it’s really a chance for me to get to know them outside of them being students,” she says. “When I have those on my calendar, I do not move them unless it’s a true emergency; that’s very, very sacred time with kids for me.”

School leaders: What systems are in place at your school to make sure every student feels seen, known, and connected? How do you engage in this work alongside your staff? Please share what’s working in your community in the comments section.