Belonging, Part Two

Noticing

Last weekend, David Didau wrote a great post on belonging. I agree with Didau’s position: that, “For children to feel they belong in school they need more than to merely access the social chat between friends, but also to participate in the the subtler discourse of classrooms and institutional expectations.” Didau goes on to explain how schools can explicitly teach children the language of academic success by making the architecture of academic language visible. This is an excellent point and one that, perhaps, schools don’t consider carefully enough when thinking about how to ensure our pupils can fully participate in the subtle nuances and curves and arcs of our subject disciplines. Really, how we can ensure that our children can fully participate in Michael Oakeshott’s conversation of mankind - how they belong in that conversation. This is a position I wholeheartedly support and have written about before many times, including here.

Didau’s argument is excellent and supported by references to various pieces of research that none of which, sadly, I’ve had time this week to read. But I felt something was missing. I tweeted, unfairly in hindsight, that, “There’s a tonne of this blog I agree with - and some I don’t - but it’s well worth your time reading if you subscribe.” Revisiting the blog over the past week, it’s not that I disagreed with any of it really, it was simply that something felt missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.

As it turns out, ever prolific, Didau wrote a follow up blog later in the week, after Mark Healy on Twitter had argued that belonging is a psychological process generated by identity and relationships, while language gives those experiences their form, colour and depth. Didau doesn’t feel that this is at odds with his position and expanded upon his previous blog, presenting two psychological theories, Social Identity Theory and Self Categorisation Theory, explaining what they capture, and what they leave out. I am not a psychologist and can’t claim to know enough about them, but they are certainly interesting, and I felt it was edging more towards what I felt was missing but that still remained something I couldn’t quite articulate.

The second half of his blog, focusing on philosophy, was much more helpful for me in helping to somehow locate where my feet were in this belonging dance where I didn’t know the moves well enough - or couldn’t quite explain the moves - to join in. The fog started to lift for me with the reference to Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, who argues, “we only become full human agents in a world of shared meanings.” and especially a brilliant reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s focus on language as social. Didau’s gem in this post is, I think, the following:

Meaning is never sealed within an individual mind. It emerges through dialogue, through the back and forth of speaking and being answered. On this view, belonging is not an inner feeling that follows identification. It is a relational achievement. It occurs when one’s voice is taken up and recognised within a community’s ongoing conversation.

Right, so I now feel like my feet are much more in sync with the music: belonging is linguistic as much as it is emotional. And yet, something is still missing for me. I think this is what it is, but I may well be wrong, or I may well not be articulating it clearly enough. I may well be way off the mark. I can only proffer my thoughts as a principal and English teacher who’s really interested in belonging but doesn’t have time to read all the research. Here goes.

As the principal of a school where almost 70% of our children are in receipt of the Pupil Premium, I feel so keenly the importance of ensuring all our children can access a rich, beautiful curriculum that glitters and sparks into a fire that ignites thought and agency. I want our kids to know enough about our subjects so they can argue, disagree, undermine, challenge. So their thinking is liberated. So they can pull up a chair at any table and, to paraphrase the great poet Derek Walcott, feast on their lives. So yes, in my view Didau is absolutely right: our kids need to know enough about our subjects, about their subtleties and nuances and concepts, and be inducted into the languages of them to feel that they belong within that world. This is what happens in our classrooms. Belonging is dependent on accessing the language of our subjects.

But this, I think, is the crux of it: belonging is buoyed on a sea of noticing. And this sea of noticing helps belonging to take anchor, float, and set sail. To belong is to feel noticed. To feel seen. To feel valued. To feel respected. And I don’t mean guff motivational posters in classrooms and fist bumping “You can do it!” in corridors, but the real, vital, human connection of someone paying attention to you - of being seen. This may well sound fluffy to the more cynical of you, but those of us in schools see it every day. It is vital to human connection, and it’s vital to a sense of a child feeling that they belong within that world.

It’s not at all at odds with Didau’s argument above. Linguistic belonging is crucial - inducting children into the languages of our subjects so they can thrive and belong within them. And to do that, we need to intentionally craft the expectation in our classrooms for noticing. For example, the expectation that we know what all the kids are thinking. We can do this by using mini whiteboards. Not only does it serve as a fantastic tool for live data for the teacher to use and respond to in the lesson, but narrating to the kids why we are using them is an explicit way of showing them that they belong in our classrooms - that they’re noticed: “Right, Year 9, we’re going to use mini whiteboards now because I’m really interested in what’s in your heads and I’d love to know what everything’s thinking to push our learning even further.” It’s critical that our kids know that we value their thinking, that we want to know what’s in their heads, that their contribution is valued: “Hover…. and 3, 2, 1 - SHOW ME! Right, let’s see… We have a fascinating answer here from Mohammed! Explain your answer to us, Mohammed.” … “Wow! Thank you! I’ve never thought about the volta in that poem like that before. Awesome stuff. And now I’m heading over to…Amy. Amy, your answer is SO INTERESTING. Tell us what you mean…” And so on and so forth. Noticing is powerful. It tacitly says, “I’m interested in what you have to say. I care about your learning and I want to help you. You’re important. You belong here.” Just as Adam Boxer says, “What does it say about us if we don’t hear their voices? If they can sit in front of us for an hour, and we barely recognise or register their existence? That their thoughts and opinions are excluded from our classroom conversation?” Hearing and noticing every child, every lesson, is crucial. It shows them they belong in our classroom, in our school.

As teachers, we notice all the time. We are experts in noticing: that Jen still can’t quite grasp that thesis statement; that Chris has been late to school twice that week; that Zeynab has cuts on her arm; that Nat is bouncing his knee up and down after that assembly. And in that noticing, we take action. Whether it’s to sit with Jen and a mini whiteboard and practise writing thesis statements, or chatting to Chris in form time about his lateness, or recording on CPOMS and speaking to the DSL about Zeynab, or quietly checking in with Nat that he’s ok. All of these noticings show the children that we care, and that they belong.

Of course belonging isn’t simply crafted by warm smiles in corridors and by saying to kids, “I believe in you.” That’s a well worn trope. But warm smiles in corridors are important. Being bright and cheery is important. Praising Chris for getting into school on time is important. Saying to kids that you’re going to expect more of them than they expect of themselves - and then showing them how to do it - is important. Pastoral noticing helps to forge the anchor of belonging; academic noticing helps belonging set sail.

Belonging is one of the edu words du jour. We know this is probably, in the main, because schools across the land are twitching with its inclusion in the new Ofsted framework. But what’s interesting is our response. Whether we think it should be in the framework or not, it’s certainly made us think. And I’ve thought about it a lot - it’s been rolling around in my head for a couple of weeks and I’m grateful to those who’ve pushed my thinking. I’ve got lots more to say, but that’s for another time.