“Our children are known to us”. Belonging is only one of many human needs we must tend to in schools, if we want to improve attendance.
The smallest, at first seeming immeasurable acts, have the most meaningful impact on making it possible for children and young people to find place and safety in their school.
When done with truth, care and attention, these individual and decisive actions have the greatest impact for the long term.
For what many know in broad terms as ‘belonging’ to be what it really is, ‘the place where I am known’, the adults in that place must make it so.
Place and safety can be achieved in the simplest of ways.
Belonging is not a thing you do for or give to children.
It is something which they know and feel as a result of genuine efforts which are free from the expectation of anything in return.
Belonging is just one of many factors found in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Together, these needs make us motivated to engage in and contribute to our world. For our children to be able to attend any setting, it must be a place where they will find all of the following being tended to:
Physiological Needs: Survival essentials like food, water, shelter, and rest.
Safety Needs: Security, stability, safety, and freedom from fear.
Love and Belonging: Friendship, intimacy, family, and social connection.
Esteem Needs: Respect, recognition, status, and self-esteem.
Self-Actualisation: Achieving one’s full potential, creativity, and personal growth.
To make the places where children belong (are safe and known) and therefore want to be, it is leaders investing in the recruitment, resource and training for the staff who make it so. Because those people will create a place which is meaningful and real for children and their families: No checklists. No fancy beanbags. No lava lamps. Because those are just ‘things’ after all.
At our recent ISS Registration inspection the HMI recalled visiting a school that said it had ‘belonging’ solved. All done. They did this by having a beanbag in every classroom for every child, plus a lava lamp which whirled pretty glitter in spirals; A welcome routine for every morning for everyone; Enough wobble boards for each SEND learner to help themselves to when wanted; Underlays, overlays, talking mats and a buddy system; A celebration assembly for all on Friday afternoons…The inspector agreed that these novelties do not make safety and place, they’re things - a coverall.
These things don’t say, “I know you.”
Only the people in our schools can do that.
Here at BCE, we use the term ‘belonging’ because it is the language understood and accepted by everyone so cuts through misunderstanding and wasted time. The way we understand it here is:
At Beyond Creative Education, our children are known to us.
This is what makes BCE and other settings like it the places children know they can be and call their own. It is measurable and achievable when you have the right team, because you wrote the right recruitment and appraisal plan with a really decent training and resourcing strategy to match, which you choose to model yourself as a leader. Every day, no matter what.
It is all about hearts and minds at BCE and although many will not write “Know your learners” into job descriptions and plans, that is exactly what we do here. Because knowing the child is what makes them safe, noticed, just be and therefore settle in.
It is only in the small quiet settle-corner designed with one learner alongside their key adult; the carefully timed expression and smile intentionally designed for one child who needs it at that pivotal moment of transition between activities; the interestingly shaped artefact found at the beach on Sunday and handed to the child they know will find it fascinating and wonderful on Monday…
All of these seemingly immeasurable things are totally measurable with the right team who know they are most valuable by noticing with honesty and without expectation, because this is just how we do things here.
Leaders are responsible for finding and recruiting these people who live and breathe ‘noticing’ others without awareness. Nobody taught them this life skill it is just in their bones. But then resourcing, training and appreciating them doing that thing which comes so naturally, but now every day in the work place, takes a quality of leadership that is creative and unusual.
To learn about the uniqueness of our ways at BCE and how they can be applied in your home or education setting, get in touch. You can let us know what you’d like to find out about specifically by completing this form.
Our training workshops or parent and carer talks in schools, hubs or the community are accessible and affordable with special discounts to all neighbouring partners and a pro bono offer to those who work with us. We can design sessions specifically for your family or your team, with their needs and aspirations in mind to deliver practical approaches they will take away the same day.
Find out about what we can do here. We’ll be glad to hear from you.
