[Music] sense of belonging is important for everybody so even for adults for our workplaces it's something to think about to help um keep people staying in their job so there's less Transitions and less turnover um but I do think it is particularly important for students and for young people because it helps them do well in school um and we know that for them for them to be successful in their adult years that being doing well in school and and having success academically is really important um and so I I think it is something that we should be thinking about for students and young people and I think for teenagers especially it's important to think about sense of belonging because a lot of times there's um for younger kids there's an emphasis on thinking about social and emotional development and sense of belonging and school climate but once you get to teenage years into middle school and high school then there's more of a shift to thinking about how they're doing academically and making sure that their test scores are good and they're on track for graduation and all of those things are really important um but in order for them to be successful and to reach those Milestones academically you also have to be thinking about um the sense of belonging and what's going on with them social and emotionally and I think sometimes that's forgotten about for teenagers and in middle school and high school so I think it's important especially for those years for us to really emphasize that um because we often times don't think about it you want them to have a positive relationship with probably at least one adult in the school um and so hopefully that's their teacher but if it's not their teacher if they're not connecting with their teacher but they have a guidance counselor they have um a school psychologist or they have um somebody any other adult that they can feel like they can talk to and they feel they have a trusting relationship that will be a lot better for that student um because they have that relationship with someone in the school the positive relationship benefits students in a in a lot of ways um so we're thinking about high school students um you know they really need to trust their teachers and feel connected to their teachers to be motivated to do well in school um and so we know a lot from the research that motivation is really important and that the relationships are really important and if students don't feel motivated they don't like the classes they don't feel like they want to contribute or they feel like they're not doing a good job that they feel like they're struggling in that subject for one way or the other and they don't feel like they can ask for help um then all of those reasons for all of those reasons they're going to struggle academically they may um not try very hard in that class they're grades May dip they um may not necessarily even show up to that class um and so it's really important um not only for them to be motivated and for them to um complete the assignments but also for them to um feel like they can ask for help if they need it if something if they're not understanding the material or if something is going on at home that maybe is keeping them from being able to complete the assignments um that they need to be able to talk to that teacher and have a relationship with them so that they feel that they're trusted and heard and also that that teacher is going to understand what's happening for them and take that into account and not just say well you know I don't care about what is happening for you at home you have to get this assignment into to me today or you get a zero um and so really being able to understand what's going on for that student um and help them be successful and that's really important and so there's lots of different things and different practices that people can use to help connect with their students um and some of them are are just simply like knowing what your student likes to do what are their interests what do they really um like to do on the weekends what are their hobbies and so you can like build those kinds of things into activities with them because you understand kind of where they're coming from um what's going on with their families and having connection with their parents and their families and understanding um kind of culturally like what's going on with that family um that those are all things that can really help um for teachers to feel uh for students to feel connected to to their teachers um and then also just simply having teachers in the hallway and um saying hi you know knowing knowing the students name and pointing them out and and bringing in some of those connection points that they if they know their interests and they know that they maybe had a baseball game over the weekend so you can say like hi Johnny like how was your baseball game and so students feel seen and heard um and feel known by the different people that are in um the school people are are working really hard and generally if people are working in a school this principal staff any staff Any teacher that they really care about students and really want the students to be successful otherwise they wouldn't be there and so I would say that they are working really hard um and I have not met any Educators that don't think it's important and don't care about what's going on for students it's really hard to ask a teacher to think about not only what's going on academically but also social emotionally for these students but there is research to show that there are schools that can do this successfully um and one of them are Community Schools so these are schools that have um Rel relationships with the community that um they bring in Community Resources to the school so that it's not just on the teacher so that if there's something going on with a student they can connect with resources to help that student and so what you really need is for for teachers to have resources and for them to um know okay I know that this student is having this ex struggle where can I go to help them instead of the teacher feeling like I have to help them and on top of the job that they already have and also I would say for teachers to be successful they have to have the tools in order to know um about things other than just curriculum and instruction and how to help students academically and how do you um deal with students or connect with students that are of different cultures from your own um and all of those other things that are really important um and so you really need good professional development for teachers um to be able to learn some of those skills and be able to build on some of the skills that they learn um in their schools to get their degrees visit us online at ideast stream.org welcome for more web extras links to resources and to watch the documentary you are welcome creating safe and supportive schools a production of idea 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