How do schools foster a structure of belonging and community?

Often when you walk into a building, whether it is a home, office, school or store, you can get a feeling of the atmosphere and community in the building. How do schools foster a structure of belonging and community? In Community - The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block speaks of creating a stronger social fabric, having groups of people together to explore possibilities rather than problems and create more ownership in the decision making process.

One area he speaks of is physical space. Most spaces are created for control and efficiency. In an earlier post, I wrote about creating learning spaces to maximize student learning based on their needs. Spaces that are designed to be collaborative and welcoming create a culture of belonging and community, assisting people in taking ownership for their community and possibilities they can create. This creates a social structure for these possibilities to be explored and created with everyone in the community being accountable for their success.

Block also speaks of the need for good questions to activate conversations. In the small group gatherings we facilitate in our learning teams we always start with a question to explore. This helps us focus on the purpose and allows people to engage in the possibilities of the topic and take ownership for their learning. The small groups allow for discussion with various staff and give different perspectives that perhaps would not have been explored without a vertical grouping.

So what ways can we strengthen community and belonging through schools? Historically, schools have been the heart of our communities. Neighborhoods were built around them, most people have experience with schools in some aspect of their life. How do we increase belonging in the building? Increasing voice for all - students, staff, parents, and community- creates and strengthens the social fabric of our environment. When people discover and share the gifts they offer and are acknowledged and valued for these, cohesiveness and trust is built. Student voice can be heard through choice in the classroom, leadership teams and vertical grade buddies. These all create ownership for what they are accomplishing and accountability for responsible citizenship- contributing and giving back. Staff voice can be developed through building distributed leadership, having discussions around the possibilities rather than problems and the shift of ownership. Reaching out to community in various ways to have them involved in schools - parent councils, reading programs in our schools (involving community members and business people who may not have children in the school) and classroom presentations are a few methods we have explored in our school.

Block states that the overall premise is to "build the social fabric and transform isolation within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole."(2009) Currently communities are functioning more in isolation than ever before. How do schools return to being the heart of the community and help to foster the structure of belonging and community as a whole?