In this episode, we explore the transformative power of belonging in classrooms and school communities with Rebecca Bellingham and Veronica Scott. They are authors of the brand new book, The Artful Approach to Exploring Identity and Fostering Belonging. Join us as this incredible author team and my colleague, Tessa Hathaway, delve into the research, personal stories, and concrete examples from their book that facilitate the conditions where every student feels seen, valued, and free to be themselves.

Veronica Scott:
 

For us, belonging means everyone feeling truly seen, valued, and free to be their unique selves. And we chose belonging for a lot of reasons, but also because when you have belonging in a community, it feels like anything is possible: innovation, creativity, social change, and also academic success too. And that's not just a feeling from us. It's not just our opinion. That's a really heavily researched topic. And so we're sort of leaning heavily on decades of research by Claude Steele and Beverly Tatum and Geoff Cohen and Zaretta Hammond. And so that's a lot of behind why we felt belonging was at the heart of this work in this book.

Rebecca Bellingham:
 

And we often say that belonging is more than kindness-

Veronica:
 

Yeah.

Rebecca:
 

... or a standalone activity to sort of foster belonging, that it really is something that you're fostering and being intentional about all year long from the beginning of the year and all those in-between moments. It's really what makes real community possible, and it also makes it possible for kids to really feel free to express themselves and take risks and tap into who they are and really feel connected to themselves, but also to the community at large.

Tessa Hathaway:
 

How do you recognize or notice those students who need additional support and help with belonging? I was thinking about myself as this Black student in central Maine, who was very nerdy and other and loved being into school. So I kind of put myself in this bubble, and I was very, very quiet. I did not talk until sixth grade unless it was to the teacher. So how do you make those sorts of students feel like they belong and they can have a voice and they can be secure in that voice?

Veronica:
 

I think part of it is getting to know your students early on and making sure you do sort of know all those identifiers that they're bringing and personalities that they're bringing to the classroom so that you can create space for them to show up in whichever ways make sense for them. And you can do that through... We have in the book these identity maps with a twist-

Tessa:
 

Yeah, I love those. Yeah.

Veronica:
 

... these artful activities you can do to get to know your students throughout the year. You can do it-

Rebecca Bellingham:
 

With food.

Veronica:
 

... with food, with likes and loves, with movies and songs and-

Rebecca:
 

We did it with musicals.

Veronica:
 

We did it with musicals.

Rebecca:
 

Let's be honest.

Veronica:
 

So, I think that's a part of it, is making sure they feel free to express who they are and share that with you, and you can use that to sort of shape your activities and your classroom celebrations and how they might show up in the classroom. And then I also think, even beyond that, you might set up sort of affinity spaces and advocacy spaces for students who need additional belonging support. We created a space called the Belonging Lab, which I wonder if you want to talk about.

Rebecca:
 

Yeah. I mean, first of all, the title alone is, I think, so invitational. Belonging Lab, a space where we can really talk about what it means to be belonging ambassadors. I mean, that was sort of our term. We rolled that out over time. And when we would gather, one of the first things that we would do, and we would do this in classrooms, but also as part of the Belonging Lab, is that we start low stakes. And I think that's really important because asking kids to share all about who they are right away feels... It's too vulnerable for probably most kids, most people, but especially kids who might have heightened belonging uncertainty for whatever reason, for whatever the context or whatever their identity.

So in Belonging Lab, we certainly made sure to start low stakes when we were building that community. Sometimes that's as simple as starting with a question like, "What's your favorite pizza topping?" and then building from there and building that relationship across time. So you're building that trust and making room for more and more openness, and that's the kind of work we would do in Belonging Lab. And then also thinking about what's a space that might need a little extra care in this school or in this community and helping them sort of identify a way that they could make a difference in the school or in the community. And then building community among the group as well. So they felt like there was a place for them to show up as they were. And we made it very organic and informal. So it was not like-

Veronica:
 

We met during lunchtime. And one thing that was surprising for me, at least, about that space was I assumed... It was sort of a student leadership club, and so I thought maybe students who were typically drawn to traditional student leadership opportunities would be the most drawn to Belonging Lab. But instead, we had those students, but we also had students for whom belonging uncertainty was maybe at the forefront of their minds. And those students really had sort of... It became like an affinity space for them as well, for students who were struggling with belonging uncertainty. And so creating that community within the space was such an important part of that work.

Rebecca:
 

Yeah, yeah.

Veronica:
 

We thought we'd do this really sophisticated work our first meeting and bring in the work of Geoff Cohen and explain to them the real concept of belonging and talk about the book a little bit in ways that made sense for fifth grade. And then we asked all of the students to share, if they wanted to, why they joined. And one student definitely said, "Oh, my parents said this would be great on my college resume."

Rebecca:
 

And they were in fifth grade, I will remind you.

Veronica:
 

Yeah, but we needed them there too.

Rebecca:
 

We did. We did. And that was important because we were modeling for some of those kids those behaviors around noticing how you might be more kind, for one thing, but also noticing how you might interrupt in a moment where certain things are happening that... And those kids have a lot of power sometimes, and so helping them to notice how they're behaving and how they might step in and make a difference was really important.

Tessa:
 

What is your first memory of feeling like an outsider or experiencing belonging uncertainty?

Veronica:
 

Well, I just saw Wicked, so the questions coming to mind is did I have belonging uncertainty thrust upon me? Was I born with it? I'm not sure because I've always sort of felt like an outsider. There are so many moments I can think of throughout my schooling, but without sort of turning this into a therapy session, I felt that a lot too. I definitely felt being Black and Chicana and growing up in Texas in the '90s, going to public school, that sort of sets the scene of what my schooling was like.

But I did have one teacher in kindergarten, Ms. Paris, who is a Black woman, and I feel like I won the lottery when it came to Ms. Paris and having that be my kindergarten experience. She was like a literal Miss Honey walking around if Miss Honey had a super-cute Jheri curl. I just remember the way that she made me feel and the way that she sort of countered that belonging uncertainty I was certainly feeling in a majority white class by just the time she spent with me, the tone of voice she used, the care that she put into her read-alouds. All of that just sort of helped the belonging uncertainty for me in kindergarten. And then she was my last Black classroom teacher for the rest of my career.

So as an adult now, I know how special that was to get to have that and how important that representation is. And while we certainly can't represent all of our students' identities, as teachers, we can bring representation into the classroom in so many ways to try to help them find those mirrors, if not in us, in the books we're choosing and the ways we celebrate, in the moments we gather, the songs we play, the references we use.

Tessa:
 

Mm-hmm.

Rebecca:
 

I had a very different experience. My world was reflected back at me all the time, and so I had a lot of mirrors. And so my belonging uncertainty wasn't as heightened. And of course, all kids, all people have moments when they feel uncomfortable or like an outsider, but the world that I grew up in was very much reflected back to me. So I had to catch up a little bit in terms of understanding that I needed to do a little bit more work to develop a critical lens for when voices aren't included in a story or... Because mine usually was. My identity usually was reflected back in the teachers that I had and the stories that I watched. And that is something that I'll always work on.

And I think that's also kind of what makes our book special, in that we both sort of talk directly to the reader from our different experiences, as for me, a white Jewish woman, and for Veronica as a Black Chicana woman. The work I have to do is making sure as a white educator that I'm creating spaces where kids who house different identities feel really safe in my space.

Tessa:
 

Yeah, it goes towards that. In the beginning of the book, you talk about the windows and the mirrors. Do you want to talk about that a little bit more?

Rebecca:
 

Yeah. I think what we love about the idea of windows and mirrors is that so many teachers, so many of us think about that construct when we're thinking about building classroom libraries, creating texts that are both windows and mirrors for kids based on the brilliant Rudine Sims Bishop, who coined that phrase: windows, mirrors and sliding doors. And we thought about how can we think about that construct in a broader way and for adults? I think we use that term a lot for kids and for teaching in classrooms, but actually, that construct is so useful and helpful when you're talking with adults as well, because the world is full of windows and mirrors. The movies we watch are full of windows and mirrors. And something that we also talk about is that rarely will there be a piece of art that's like, oh, that was-

Veronica:
 

A perfect window. Yeah.

Rebecca:
 

... a perfect window or a perfect mirror. And what we like to talk about are window and mirror moments. And I think that's been really useful, especially when we're talking about identity, because it's a way to say, "Oh, that was a real window moment for me," versus saying, "That whole thing was a window for me." Or "That was a real mirror moment for me." And it creates more nuance in the conversation. It leaves a little bit more room for complexity.

Veronica:
 

And for connection too, for surprising connection between stories that maybe you wouldn't think that's a mirror story for the person because they don't share an identity per se. But there is something reflected in the mother-daughter experience or in the town they grew up in that feels similar to what they've experienced.

Rebecca:
 

Yeah. I mean, I think about the book "Ways to Make Sunshine" by Renee Watson, which we read as part of a parent book club. And it was a very interracial space, and everyone in that book club could relate to something related to the family dynamic, to the sibling dynamic, to the friendship dynamic. But there were other families where it was really a mirror in a different way.

Tessa:
 

Yeah. What are your favorite ways to make students feel affirmed and seen?

Veronica:
 

I mean, one of mine is cultural month celebrations and creating truly fresh, engaging cultural month celebrations. I grew up with sort of a complicated feeling around Black History Month, and sometimes that month was not given a lot of care and sort of felt like, okay, we're just getting out the Black History Month box, and here are the same biographies and the Black and white MLK word-finder worksheet. And so that just sort of lost its appeal for me. I didn't feel like that was a moment to shine, and I could almost feel my classmates sort of like, "All right, now it's Black History Month time." And as captivating as those stories are, like they're a part of our history for such an important reason, we just were... A lot of people were teaching them in the same ways for so long, it just felt like it sort of lost its luster.

So one of the things I did when I was DEIB associate director was really revive our cultural months and try to inspire and breathe life into those again so that kids who identify with that culture, but really all kids, would get excited about the month and excited about the learning that was to come. And one of those experiences was called Look to the Stars. And we celebrated STEM and also poetry and the arts around STEM, but lots of people who were lesser known and people who are known, too, but in fresh ways, like Mae Jemison and her book, the book about her-

Tessa:
 

Mae Among the Stars?

Veronica:
 

... her night among the stars. Yeah. And then we inspired kids to write poems called My Night Among the Stars, and they did artwork around that. And you could just feel sort of this buzz around campus that month that... especially for Black students. They were so excited about it, and they just felt like such an affirming kind of lift-up in that month. And we were all using that phrasing of Look to the Stars, and it was just such a beautiful time. So breathing life into those cultural months and seeing the way that that really lights kids up who identify with that culture, but also gets all kids excited to celebrate cultural months again, that's been one of my favorite ways to affirm kids.

Also, just one thing to add. We would get excited about the stories, the spotlight stories we would tell during the month, and I think that was a little bit of a peek into what the kids were going to feel. I knew it was a successful sort of theme and spotlight story when we would just get so excited researching them. There was this one time we were in our office researching people for Look to the Stars and who we might celebrate, and we found out that Benjamin Banneker, who many might know as a mathematician, wrote math poems that you could solve. And so we were flipping through books, and I was like, "Did you know?" And I remember we both were just like... Yeah, we freaked out, and we got all excited about it. And then the kids wanted to solve the math problems, and so the fourth grade teacher took that on, and they tried to solve the actual math poem. But you can sort of feel the excitement. Like, if this is exciting for us, and again coming from two different perspectives, and we're getting engaged, that's just a little bit of what the kids are going to feel potentially too.

Rebecca:
 

Yeah. I mean, I remember being so thrilled also to write my own Look to the Stars poem. I couldn't wait to create my own poem around it, using some phrases from Faith Ringgold's book, Tar Beach, and where she flies among the stars. So we borrowed some phrases from that book. We borrowed phrases from the book Mae Among the Stars. So I was so excited to create my own poem around my Night among the Stars and then creating a beautiful artwork that showed me flying through the stars myself. That kind of excitement was sort of felt throughout the campus, like you were saying. We also did a really funny but meaningful experience where we put a visual of the galaxy, and we all imagined ourselves like Mae Flying through the Stars.

Veronica:
 

That was a wonderful, mindful moment.

Rebecca:
 

It was so-

Veronica:
 

There were images from the Hubble Telescope-

Rebecca:
 

That's right.

Veronica:
 

... because they had just-

Tessa:
 

Oh, cool!

Veronica:
 

Those had just been published. It was right around that time, and so we thought that would be kind of fun and trippy to put a bunch of images of the Hubble Telescope up. So, that was another layer to add in.

Rebecca:
 

Yeah. A more embodiment layer, a layer where you imagine yourself floating, and you imagine yourself being among the stars like this amazing astronaut we celebrated, Mae Jemison.

Veronica:
 

And the STEM connection-

Rebecca:
 

And the STEM connection.

Veronica:
 

... because the science teacher got really excited about that, and then she helped us come up with science vocabulary to include in the poem.

Rebecca:
 

These words, right? Galaxy words.

Veronica:
 

So it was like all of this buy-in from around the school, from the art teacher, from the science teacher, from the fourth-graders who wanted to solve the math poem. And everyone was excited about Black History Month, which it's like, this is great.

Tessa:
 

Right.

Edie:
 

Thanks for tuning in today. Visit blog.heinemann.com to learn more about Veronica and Rebecca's new book. That's where you can also read a full transcript and learn about upcoming free events with all of our authors. For a 30% discount off any Heinemann professional book, use code PROFBKS30P. Until next time.