S10E9 – The Importance of Belonging with Dr. Shanette Porter

S10E9 - The Importance of Belonging

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver,

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is The Importance of Belonging with Dr. Shanette Porter.

Dr. Val: This is gonna be an amazing conversation.

Andrew: Ye! Dr. Nette Porter is a researcher. She lives in New York but she's done a bunch of research in Chicago on this idea of belonging, of creating spaces in schools that foster social and emotional development, and has found (somewhat unsurprisingly, I guess) that that actually, if you focus on those things, it leads to better outcomes all around!

Dr. Val: Yeah! And I think it's always important to have research to back what we feel when we're in a space where we belong, where we feel that. And so, Dr. Porter's research I think is invaluable to us (as caregivers, as educators) to really understand and apply. And I think the lens in which she came to this work as a psychologist is also an interesting way to look at it.

Andrew: Yeah, I don't know that we've ever had someone who sort of started their journey into education through the lens of psychology. And she was trained as a social psychologist, so she's sort of looking at these things that are related to well-being and then quickly discovered that you can't really get at those things without peeling back the other influences on somebody's life.

And so, taking that lens into the field of education and, and looking at, “Well, what else is going on?” Uh, you know, it's one thing to think about what's happening in an actual lesson inside a classroom, but then what are the relationships that kids have with each other in the classroom?

What are the relationships that they have with other adults in the building? What are the relationships they have outside of school? What's happening in their environment? What's happening in their neighborhood? What's happening in the country? What's happening in their families? All these things have an impact on not just the academic piece of “Do they learn a little bit more math or do they learn how to write, how to read,” but also more broadly, kind of, “What people do they become?”

Dr. Val: Yeah, when you just went through that list, I was thinking, “Wow, this is a really complex job,” right? And what remains central to all of the things that you listed was the young person, right? And so, if our spaces are truly human-centered, young people centered, then it feels a little simpler.

While we can get wrapped up in enlisting all of the really complex intersections that we have to face, if we say “Focus on that young person and how they feel in that space,” I think we have a good chance!

Andrew: Yeah, there's a lot of hope. There's a lot of hope. I mean, it's a powerful conversation. Powerful enough that it brought you to tears at one point, which I think is–

Dr. Val: It did!

Andrew: –the first time that happened.

Dr. Val: First time.

Andrew: Yeah. but it is, yeah, it is also a conversation filled with hope, because, it's in, you know, looking at all these ways that other things are going on in, in people's lives and taking them into account and acknowledging their full humanity, that we can actually create the, the education system that we want for all of our kids.

Dr. Val: I love that. Let's take a listen.

Andrew: All right, let's do it.

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Dr. Shanette Porter: I am Shanette Porter. I am trained as a social psychologist. I am currently at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research where I co direct the equitable learning and development group.

I am a parent, a newish parent of a two year old. A wife, a daughter, a niece. A sister! And a member of this wonderful community in New York City.

Andrew: And why research on education? How'd you find yourself dedicating your career at this point to education/educational equity?

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. You know, there's kind of different versions of it. One is that in 6th grade, I wrote an essay where I said, “Education is the key to equality.” I was literally thinking in these ways in sixth grade. I don't know how or why or kind of how I was conceptualizing equality or education at that age. That's kind of one version.

The other version is kind of stumbling onto it. I got my PhD in social psychology. And then I really wanted to work with Jennifer Richeson, Dr. Richeson, who's at Northwestern. And I applied only to her lab to be a postdoc after my degree. And she didn't even have a posted position. It was like a cold email, and by some miracle she created space for me! She had just won the MacArthur Genius Award and it was just perfect timing.

It was, and dual appointments at the Institute for Policy Research and the Department of Psychology. And I just fell in love with the intersection of the two, of policy and research.

And then eventually over the next couple of years that I was with Dr. Richardson, it became clear that education was going to be my focus.

I will say now though that, uh, you can't really talk about education. You can't talk about young people without talking about the various other systems and ways that they intersect in their lives. Right? And so, now I think quite a bit about housing and transportation, the socioeconomics of communities. Access to medicine and food. And the criminal justice system.

So, I think about all of these things now, and I think I started off with a very narrow focus. And it's just expanded over time. And now I wonder am I really still focused on education or am I doing something more and different and will it continue to grow?

I think that's sort of the only way, right? Our worlds are not partitioned in this way where I'm like, “I'm at school.” That's the thing that's happening is cut off from outside society. In fact, so much of my work is really talking about “How do we bring in what's happening outside inside” and “How has school been shaped by policies.”

Andrew: Yeah. That's fascinating. I'm curious, this, the sort of like, entry point of psychology into the education field. We've talked to economists, we've talked to people who start out just, like, going at, at the policy piece. But, can you talk about the role that your psychology training has played in shaping, what you do and what you focus on and what you care about?

Dr. Shanette Porter: Entering from the lens of psychology is a very particular lens. I do think many of the ways I was trained cut off important ways that culture, that structures, that policies really shape people's lives, and instead focused in really on what's happening at the interpersonal level and what's happening inside of people.

That's really a really important lens. It's important to understand what young people's needs are. It's important to understand that young people are developing and that adults have these same experiences of seeking belonging, of seeking places where they feel an affinity with others. Right?

We're really social beings. And so being trained as a social psychologist keeps that sort of at the core and the center of how I think about things. I still study things like belonging. I still think about that as one of the core things that schools can do to productively support the development of young people into really well adjusted adults.

And so, yes, academics, yes, the learning. But these things aren't disconnected. And so, there is that piece that really stays with me.

As I have gone deeper into my study and scholarship, the thing that has been layered on now that I think is missing from some of the training in social psychology is the ways that different students are signaled different things about who they are and what their identity is and what they're capable of, right?

Dr. Shanette Porter: These things are really racialized and gendered. They are shaped by the economic circumstances of families, right? And so, now I think about it in much more complex ways. I think I came into it as a social psychologist really thinking about what actually happens in terms of relationships (which I think is extraordinarily important!) but you have to also understand then “How are those things shaped by culture?”

How are those things shaped by what's happening in the world? Because they don't stay outside of the school walls.

Andrew: Yeah, it's like you sort of start in this really narrow, “What does psychological well-being mean for a person?” And you start sort of like scraping back the edges of what's causing issues in that and you realize like, “Oh, I need to take a bit of a broader lens.”

So like, “What does relationships look like? Oh, I need to take a little bit of a broader lens because even that is impacted by the neighborhood you live in.” And it's like, if you're trying to get at this, like, “What does it mean for people to be able to thrive?”

You, you can't just focus in on one narrow thing. I think like so much of the way we think about education (and certainly, like, making things better in education) is like a silver bullet. Like, “What's the one thing that we're going to do that's going to fix it? Let's narrow in on grit. Let's narrow in on curriculum.”

“Let's narrow in on restorative justice,” whatever, like find the one thing that's going to fix it in the context of this narrow schoolhouse. And it seems like your research has really forced you to kind of broaden out your lens and look at there, there are all these factors that are, that are at play here.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. I mean, we could talk about social and emotional development broadly, right?

In some ways, those constructs were developed in kind of racially neutral ways, and they were set in a kind of particular ideology, that didn't necessarily incorporate the broad range of experiences of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

And so, when you think about the fact that structures and policy, racialization and culture intersect with social psychology and what we're going through, it affects everything. Down to how we measure things. Down to how we define things. Who we study, how we study. What our interpretations are, what kinds of analyses we do. How we talk about them.

It's not one thing, it's everything.

And all the more critical in spaces where we know, you know, segregation has happened. Where we really conceive of, of education as an opportunity to live into these American values of meritocracy, right?

So there's something particularly stark about there being a space then that is intended to do one thing (or that we talk about) that we seem to aspire to as a country, many of us, right? For this space to be a place of equality. And we know that it's exactly the opposite, and if anything I think, you know, can reify some of the inequalities and inequities that happened just straight from birth.

And so, I think my deep interest (to kind of go back to that question of, like, “How do I get here? Why in here? Why do I stay here?”) it's really that I think I still hold on to a little bit of this belief that, that education, that schools can actually be this disruptive space that we, we imagine them to be.

I love that you have this podcast because it, it leans right into that value. It resonates with me so deeply.

Dr. Val: For our audience how would you define belonging from your perspective?

Dr. Shanette Porter: You know, the simplest way that I can describe belonging is, I think historically we've talked about belonging as you belonging in a space. I think of belonging as “The space belongs to you,” right? You shape the space. You influence the space. The space is different because you are in it.

You're co-constructing that space. You're co-designing it. You own that space.

I have a friend who is an artist and we talk all the time about her evolution from going to museums to, to art galleries, and experiencing it deeply and emotionally because she's an artist. But suddenly realizing like, “Oh, this space belongs to me. I can contribute here. I can make this a different space. I can create new spaces. I AM an artist. I AM this thing.” And so I think that's the most crisp way I can think of for defining belonging.

Dr. Val: That just made me want to cry! I don't, like, I don't even know what's happening! No, I'm so serious. Like, it's just, uhh!

Dr. Shanette Porter: I have those experiences too! Because you can feel them, they're visceral, right? You remember the times that you've gone in spaces and you thought like, “Yeah, I have all the things, I have the uniform, I'm here, people know my name. I have some friends.” And then you remember those experiences where you go in and people are listening to you! They respect you. You're coming in full with your dignity, right? You are someone to be heard. And people respond to you in whole different ways.

I think so much about maybe the alternative definition of belonging is like, “I am respected,” right? I think we complicate things. I'm an academic. I'm very good at complicating things.

[Laughter]

That will not surprise you. But I think it's really simple.

If we were to boil it down to, kind of, one experience, or, like, one question, I think that running through young people's heads (especially at the like, preadolescent/adolescent phase), it's like, it's like, “Do I belong here?” But it's like, “Am I respected here?”

I think one of the key things we can do (I try to put this into practice even with my two year old) is, is actually demonstrate our respect, right?

Demonstrate that people are heard. So, I don't know (I don't want to put words in your mouth), but I wonder if that's, I have those same emotional reactions because I'm like, “Oh, I know that difference!”

Like, I know that feeling, I know that experience. And it's, it's unfortunate that there are structures and policies that, that sort of keep, keep those signals in place, right?

Keep reminding us, “Maybe you don't, maybe you can't say that thing. Maybe this isn't your space.”

Dr. Val: Yeah, no, thank you for that. That was, that cut deep. And I think one of the reasons it cut deep (in addition to personal experiences) is I want that for my children.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Mmm.

Dr. Val: It seems, as you said, so simple, things that we can create. And yet, that might not always be the case in schools. So, yeah. Uh, gosh! I usually don't cry in the interview!

Maybe in the intro/outro!

[Laughter]

Andrew: That was a first.

Dr. Val: I know!

Dr. Shanette Porter: So do you talk with your kids about those experiences?

Dr. Val: Yeah, yeah! I think I have examples of certain classrooms or certain sports teams where your definition of belonging is true for my young people. And so, that feels okay. They get some of it, you know? Uh, but I don't think school is currently designed for them to feel that way.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah.

Dr. Val: The entire day or with every adult that they interact with. Can you talk a little bit about belonging and control and the relationship there? I see schools as places of trying to control student bodies–

Dr. Shanette Porter: Mmm.

Dr. Val: –and student movement, and student ideas. So, what is the connection between those things?

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. The first thing it makes me think of is we move to this idea, “Well there's a policy that can fix it.”

At the school level, some of those policies then end up being, “Well we have to know what's happening. We have to record it. We have to observe it so that we can react to it, and we can respond, and we can fix it.” But that can sometimes feel to young people like you're being more policed!

You’re being policed. You're being monitored. You're being watched.

But one of the things it makes me think about is, like, the opposite of all those feelings of exclusion. And school is a place of, like, extinguishing curiosity and joy is actually humanizing, right?

It's like, what is a humanizing experience? And I think if we think about that is as being a fundamental baseline goal of our policies, you might think differently about what we do.

Does it mean more observation and surveillance? Right? Or does it mean talking with young people more to understand what they enjoy, what they're happy with, what's not working for them.

Does it mean that young people take time away from engaging in social and academics (like the stuff of school) for them to report on these survey scales, kind of “What's your sense of belonging or what,” right?

Is it that? Which is, that is a thing! And I, maybe we don't have to choose (because that is my thing!). But it can't be the only thing, right? It has to then be that's the start of a conversation with young people. That's a tool because I don't, I also don't want to get into this place of, like I said, “Like all schools are doing bad,” right?

There are wonderful schools! There are amazing schools. There are amazing experiences in, inside of schools that otherwise don't feel amazing! Right? So I don't want to get into that. But like teachers are, they're amazing and phenomenal teachers. So I, I also don't want to talk about this in reductive terms, but we can still talk about the places where we know that's not happening and we know it's not happening enough. We also know these amazing experiences aren't happening equally for all young people. And certainly, not all young people are experiencing these wonderful experiences.

And so, to get back to your question, the thing it really makes me think about when we think about this idea of belonging/control, what it makes me think about it is, is moving toward relationship, and moving toward “What's the, what's the human-centered way to engage?” What’s a humanizing way to think about and understand and cultivate experiences of belonging? Because that's ultimately fundamentally what it is.

It's like, you can't litigate respect in these ways.

And so, when I think about belonging, there's just no way to cultivate it, to foster it, to create classrooms that are responsive to a particular student's needs around belonging.

There's no way to do that that does not involve talking with students, engaging with them, respecting them. It's like the exact opposite of control! It's like relinquishing control.

It's sharing power.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew: I think one of the things I found really fascinating from your research is that I can imagine somebody saying, “Well, yeah, but like, that's not what's really important.

What's really important is that they learn more. That their test scores are better,” or whatever. But when you dig into the numbers that these things actually contribute to better test scores. If the only thing you care about is academics, you should still care about this sense of belonging, the sense of social and emotional development.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. Listen, I care about learning! I think schools are fundamentally places where, where young people go to develop socially, emotionally, and cognitively. Those things are learning. That is what we expect out of our schools.

My experience so far has been that even people who start off with the belief that there's this, you know, this dichotomy, this kind of false binary between social and emotional and learning outcomes or learning trajectories. People who start off that way, I think just have a fundamental misunderstanding of human development! Of how the brain actually operates. They're not like sections in our brain, like one devoted to learning over here and one goes socially and emotionally!

It's not, it's not at all true. Right?

The other thing is actually this way in which the world has just become so extraordinarily divisive, right? And so, now we have these terms like social and emotional development that have been given kind of new definitions.

But, like, 30 years ago nobody argued with the idea that, like, young people in school (you know, I'll admit we didn't talk about, like, belonging quite the same way) but like, you know, parents talk about wanting their kids to be seen! People talk about that right now. And I think that's what we're talking about when we say these things. Because we know, right, that kids who feel seen, who feel heard, who feel like they matter, learn! Right? They are motivated to learn, right? They are curious, right? It continues to unlock and unleash all the wonderful curiosity of young people.

These things just aren't on any level, right? On a neuroscientific level. On a psychological level. On a sociological level. These are not separate things that we can distinguish.

And so, my research specifically shows that schools that are focused on supporting the social and emotional development of young people are rich sites of learning, right?

They also have great impacts on test scores. They have great impacts on attendance. They have great impacts on high school graduation and the likelihood of going to college. So in these really long run/medium run, kind of ways, they're mattering for young people.

We also know that schools that focus on test scores matter (uh, for students’ test scores in particular), but you're missing all the other dimensions of students’ growth. Right?

And so you're exactly right. And these, in these frameworks that seemed to sort of be exclusively focused on things like test scores (on these metrics of achievement), which in educational attainment, even if you, if you really focus in on that particular kind of paradigm of what school is and what the framework for school is, really social and emotional development (because it's always been true. This is not a new thing. We just have new research) is the thing to focus on, right? These create the motivational states in young people. Being seen, being heard, thinking you matter, right? All those kinds of things. Those have always been the things that have contributed to young people's experiences of learning in really highly transferable ways, right?

There are other ways of doing school that I think can produce equal outcomes on test scores (and, and even on college-going and things like that),but, but we have to wonder at what cost. Right? Because we are really interested in young people, not just achieving and succeeding in terms of academics, but really in terms of whole child development.

Right? And so, having mentally healthy and socially healthy young people is really a benefit to not just them, but all society.

People understand, like, “Yeah, I want my kid to be seen. And you're not talking about just soft and mushy things that are going to be taught in some of your saying.” That the way you do school respects students in a different way and cultivates a different sense of curiosity (right?) out of young people.

There's this way in which I always talk about “You can cultivate these things in young people” and there's this other way that I always want to say, like, “This is who young people naturally are, and we can either–

Dr. Val: Mm hmm.

Dr. Shanette Porter: –distinguish this, right? Or we can support it.” Right?

Andrew: It's not like you have to create it. You just have to not beat it out of them.

Dr. Shanette Porter: You’re not creating motivation, right? Like, all those things. How can you continue to be a vessel for it, I think is a question we can ask ourselves.

Dr. Val: Ooh! Can you talk a little bit about your research and any connections you have made with integrated spaces for young people or racially segregated spaces for young people?

Dr. Shanette Porter: This is a great question. I will say (and this is a little defensive. It's not the way I like to approach work) but we often get questions that say, “Hey, we know that schools that do these kinds of things are going to matter for young people, but we also wonder what about the peer effects?”

“What about the backgrounds of these students?” Right? Basically, “Are there schools that are so disadvantaged in particular ways that it's impossible to foster curiosity?” I mean, that, that question at its root is, is extraordinarily classist and racist. Right? So I don't want to seed it necessarily, but let's just talk about it for a moment.

So I studied Chicago, so I should say that it's extremely segregated, right? Schools tend to be predominantly Black, predominantly Brown.

And then, you know, some schools that include Black and Brown students. And that's 90-ish percent of the students. And so, what we found is that there's a limited relationship between the racial makeup of a school and a school's ability to foster social and emotional development in ways that matter for longer run outcomes.

I think there's, like, a different sort of, like, philosophical question that we might ask ourselves. And, like, I almost want to ask you guys this question because, you know, there are lots of people that I think would say, “Actually, integrating schools was a mechanism to achieve equality and in and of itself is not really a goal,” right? Like, the goal was never about integration per se, it was about creating equal opportunities, creating equal choices. Right?

It was about evening the playing field, right? And so, I would love to hear how you all think about this in terms of, like, why the Integrated Schools podcast?

And do you think of integration as the goal?

Andrew: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the ultimate goal, I think, is, is multi-racial democracy. Like, the ultimate goal is, is creating a country that lives up to our ideals that we have never lived up to. And I think that there's lots of work to do on that.

And to me, it feels like the most promising place to focus energy is on schools. Because like you said earlier, there's that, like, kernel of hope that schools can be a place where we can create equity, where we can create those environments.

And I think it does come to this idea of belonging. We often differentiate between desegregation and integration. Like, what we did was desegregate schools. What we did was say “There's this number, this percentage of kids in this place.” And back to your original definition of belonging, I think what we did was say, “Okay, we're going to create spaces where we are allowing you to come into this space.”

So, you know, like you, “Maybe you don't feel like you belong, but like you are technically allowed to be in this space. But we didn't create spaces where your presence changed this space. You don't truly belong here. This space is not, is not changed and enriched by your presence here.”

And so, to me the goal of school integration, the goal of creating these, like, meaningfully integrated schools (that's different from what we have tried in the past), but that really what we're looking at is like, “What does it mean to create a new system of education that actually creates a space for belonging for everybody. That everybody's showing up changes the space into a better space.”

Like, in the ideal world that I would like to, my kids to live in. I don't think I'm going to live there. Probably they don't live in there. Maybe it's their kids or their grandkids, whatever.

But like, you know, in the ideal world, it is a, it is a country that everybody belongs in. It is a, you know, it is a planet that everybody belongs in. That, like, the presence of everybody makes everybody richer. And so, this is like one, one tool, a space where I see the most promise is in education and this idea of belonging feels so powerful, as a way to think about that.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. You're reminding me so much of the ways in which we have given lip service to these ideas, and sometimes we'll actually make progress on them in the sense that we'll create schools, and to your point, technically integrate them, but then stratify schools, right? Create tracks or–

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanette Porter: –create special programs for White students versus Black students, right? And so, there'll almost be policy in some ways, and sometimes they'll be sort of implicit, but find ways to still reproduce the sort of stratification that exists in society within schools, even as we might ascribe to (or make claim to) these more egalitarian goals.

That's, that's really interesting. I really appreciate that answer.

Dr. Val: Yeah. My thinking goes in a different direction. One, I appreciate your research finding that even in racially isolated schools, the opportunity to create those feelings of belonging are present. You know, I went to a racially isolated school. I loved it. I felt like I belonged. It felt like home. Yeah, we didn't have, like, as many course offerings, but I'm good!

[Shanette Laughs]

I made it, you know, and I, and I had a,

Dr. Shanette Porter: Dope human being. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Of, of pride and self and community, all of those things really mattered to me. And so, if I have to choose between those types of schools for my kids, I want to choose the place where they come out whole. You know? That feels important because I can supplement some of the other things, right?

And so, I want my children to come out of school whole.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah, that all resonates with me.

I mean, I, I will say that I, I, like, I struggle with it quite a bit as a parent. Because on the one hand, I still hold as a value a sense of, bridging, of building, of otherness, right? Of social bonds.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanette Porter: That I think will hold us together and I think are like the key to a future stability in the world, and in lots of ways, right?

Like, if we all saw each other as equals and wanted to care for each other, we would make different environmental decisions, right?

Dr. Val: Absolutely.

Dr. Shanette Porter: And so, I think a lot about my little person who's only two and wanting him to be able to feel a natural affinity to whomever that may be, right?

And so, there's this piece of me that's like, I don't want to cut off those opportunities based on really reductive beliefs about race or about anything else.

So that's, that's one major side of me (and I don't know what the decisions will be as he gets older because he's only two), but there is the other side that I think the same thing where you know, the conversations we have, we already have teacher parent conferences, and every single one starts off with a set of assessment, right?

And I try to begin or end each one by saying, like, “I just want, I want my kid to be radically loved in your space. What are you doing to ensure my kid feels loved.”

Dr. Val: Woo!

Dr. Shanette Porter: Like, in your space? And I mean it in all the ways! I'm like, “What do the books look like?” Do you know what he likes for lunch? Can you tell me what he's enjoying in terms of learning, and where he's struggling? But what does that actually look like? That means a lot of different things. What does it look like for my young person? How would you know? And so, I do view that as being a partnership with, with educators.

And, I'm acutely aware that, that you know, other things will matter that, despite the best efforts of a loving educator. Uh, and so I, I share that, right? I share that we can create the loving home and the space and a place where you feel affirmed and you feel affirmed for who you are.

And where you're allowed to be and figure out and explore and figure out who you are. And we're going to do our best. We're going to do our best not to make assumptions. But, you know, what school will do that best for my young person kind of remains an open question to me. And I mean, yeah, nothing like being a parent to really,

[Laughter]

have you, you know, really scrutinizing “What are your values and how do you live them out?”

Dr. Val: Yes.

Dr. Shanette Porter: I mean, that's what this podcast is about, I think.

Dr. Val: That's literally.

Andrew: 100%. Yeah.

Dr. Val: And I, I want to say it gets easier, and it doesn't. That, like, them getting the sniffles. That gets easier. Wrestling with how you live out your values and the choices that you make for your young people and then you support your young people. You know, as they're deciding what they want.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah.

Dr. Val: That continues.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, I think there's a way that, that the more sort of self-actualized they become, the more input they actually have, you know, they don't get any say where they go to kindergarten.

[Dr. Porter laughs]

You know, middle school. Okay, we started to have a little more. Okay, now high school so, like, in some ways that makes things easier, but then it feels like the sort of stakes go up as well.

Dr. Val: Oh, definitely.

Andrew: And so, the emotional burden stays, stays the same because even though they're kind of shouldering some of it with you, the, the stakes feel, feel higher.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. Our new research is really focused on students’ experience and students’ expression of their own experiences. And we kind of started the conversation there.

But yeah, like, talking with young people, whether they're your own child or whether you're an educator in school, how do you understand what young people are experiencing and what they want? And that being the kind of driving force in “What you do?” So I love, I love that and I can also understand the ways in which that evolves over time.

I love this idea! Young people leave school whole. I'm going to, I'm going to take this Val.

Dr. Val: You can have it! You can have it. Yeah. You can have it.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Like you went in whole. OK, how do you leave whole?

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Shanette Porter: I LOVE that!

Dr. Val: Yep.

Andrew: This has been so wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time for coming on, for sharing all this. Certainly that definition of belonging will stick with me for a long time. And I love your ability to look super small, all the way out to big and wide.

I mean, nothing that you have said seems particularly shocking, right? Like, if you feel like you belong in a place, you're going to learn better. You're going to thrive. And that's not, that shouldn't be surprising. And yet, you look at the way we've done education for so long, and it would seem like that is sort of groundbreaking. So I'm really grateful for you, for you sharing it with us and coming on and for all your work.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. Thank you! And I love that you're leaving with that. If there's one thing I hope people take away from the research, it really is that learning and social and emotional development, they're not even flip sides of the coin! They are the same thing.

Andrew: The same thing.

Dr. Shanette Porter: Yeah. And so if we can learn how to integrate and knit those things together. In instruction and pedagogy, in curricular materials, and policies of schools, right? If we’re always centering those things in our understanding of them as one thing, I think school would be totally and completely transformed.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Dr. Val: That's awesome.

Andrew: Well, your sixth grade self was on to something and I'm glad that it–

Dr. Val: Yes!

[Laughter]

Andrew: –that it led you to this place. And, it was just such a great conversation. So, thank you so much.

Dr. Val: That middle school teacher, I'm telling you! We have power. We have power. I'm telling you!

Andrew: Middle school teachers, that’s where it’s at.

[Dr. Porter laughs]

Dr. Val: That’s where it’s at!

Dr. Shanette Porter: Well, thank youmboth so much. It's a great joy, and I'm taking many things away as well. And I just, I really appreciate you all inviting me here. It was a very, very fun conversation for me. I got to think about things in a way that I don't always get to. It's nice to kind of, take a step back and say, “How does this research matter?

What does it mean for the world? And how does it connect with the other conversations that are happening?” So I really, really appreciate that. Thank you!

Dr. Val: Awesome. Thank you!

-----------------------------------

Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Dr. Val: I have lots of thoughts and clearly lots of feels. I think the first thing I kinda want us to grapple with a little bit is when she talks about “It's not one thing, it's everything.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And you kind of alluded to this in the intro, and how I think schools right now are often set up, that one teacher is responsible for one content area. And so, each educator only gets, like, a slice of this particular student.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And only for a short amount of time. I think it's easy for educators to think a child is only one way, or only has one experience. And I think, you know, back to my early years as an educator, that was something that I was not aware of at all.

And so, when I saw a kid struggling in my class, I figured that I had enough of a piece of the puzzle to help fix it for them.

Andrew: Mmm.

Dr. Val: And I remember with this one student, he had an A in my class (and he was actually repeating a grade).

And, I’m like, “What are you doing in my class?” And he was like, “Yours is the only class that I'm passing.” And part of the reason my class was the only class he was passing is because he had a lot of absences and that never felt like a disqualifier for me based on the work that he was able to produce.

Not only far above his classmates, but far above all of the, the students that I taught that year. Right? But every educator didn't have that same thought. And it was like, “You're missing my class, so clearly this is who you are as, as a, as a young person.”

And the next year, uh, he, he dropped out. Right? And so,

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: I know. Tragic! Truly tragic. And I don't know what happened. And, and I think in my mind, right, I was like, “You're doing good in this one thing! Right? We, we can, we can overcome. We can overcome whatever obstacles you have.” And that was me not understanding. He was always in transitional housing, Probably didn't always have enough to eat.

Parents in and out of the situation as best they could. Often lived with his grandma. But to me, I was like, “Well, we can fix this thing!” And that was me not knowing literally all the other things this young person was dealing with. And I imagine if I didn't know, most of the other educators didn't know either. It was my first year. Right?

I wish somebody would've said, “Hey Val, we're having this student support meeting, 'cause we wanna try to help them out. We notice they have a lot of absences and we wanna do something about it.”

Right? And figure out what the issue is. And so, um, so, you know, I, I was feeling emotional, like, throughout that interview because I could think of lots of instances in young people who get tossed away because we think it's, like, the one thing. And it's everything. It’s all of it.

Andrew: It feels like, it feels like there's a tension here. Maybe there, maybe there isn't. But I am struck by, you know, on the one hand, I see this (particularly in school leaders sometimes) is this, like, “The only thing we can control is the eight hours a day that the kids are here. We can't use their external circumstances as an excuse to have different expectations or to be willing to accept the disparities that exist in terms of academic outcomes or in terms of discipline.”

Like, “We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than saying, ‘Well look at that kid's home life.’”And so there's this sort of like, “We have to ignore the stuff that's going on outside.”

And I think the, the, the flip side where I feel like some tension, there is A) like, I think if you're not incorporating the information about the whole kid (their whole life, their whole experience, everything that's going on with them), it's gotta be much harder to actually create a space that they feel like they belong in. And there, there are, like, legitimate challenges that come up from those discrepancies.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And, and guess what? There's probably kids who are also experiencing things like him who were excelling in school, because that became their safe place where they could have an out, you know? That was where they found consistency. And everybody's not gonna share that.

So I think part of the reason why other teachers didn't know his situation, because other teachers didn't build a relationship with him and he's not going and sharing, like, “Hey, this is what's happening at home.” So I, I do understand that, yes, we can control only what is happening, like while the young people are in our care and we can try to build relationships with them to help understand more about what's happening.

And I'm thinking about what Dr. Porter said in terms of, like, our hopes for what school can be for society, and how oftentimes it's the exact opposite. So, if we can create that, that eight hours of the school day,

[Val chuckles]

where it's not about controlling your body or…oppression!

[Val laughs]

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: You know? Like we're, we're, we're learning.

It's, “You can be your whole self.” Where there's some fun and some joy, then yes. But if “I'm coming here after having a hard time getting here and you, you still giving me a headache?”

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: “I have enough going on in my life that I don't, I don't want the additional headache.”

Andrew: “I don't need it.”

Dr. Val: “And I don't see the value in it,” right?

And so, we have to have our high expectations for our young people, and in order to help create the conditions for them to meet those expectations, we have to know what's going on in our young people's lives.

And we can't completely ignore that. And it's hard. You know, I, I don't think there's a formula for, for doing it right.

Andrew: It's simple, but it's not easy.

Dr. Val: Right.

Andrew: And Dr. Porter talks about that, like, that sort of at its root is, like, is creating systems that are humanity-centered.

Dr. Val: Yup.

Andrew: And that's hard.

It's, it's hard to think about, like, how do you scale something that is humanity-centered? How do you create a district-wide program that is humanity-centered? Because I think by nature, if it is centered on each individual kid's humanity, it has to be flexible.

And how do you, like, leave the flexibility while also being cognizant of the biases that teachers and administrators and school districts bring to the table?

So, how do you kind of create these, like, universal standards that we say “This is, this is the baseline, what everybody deserves,” while leaving the flexibility to craft something that is tailored to each individual kid's needs?

Dr. Val: So, to the point about biases and things, clearly there's some underlying beliefs that people need to grapple with when they see a White child or a privileged child with problems and find a way to create space for them versus a Black or Brown child also experiencing problems and not finding space for them. Right? There's, there's obviously some work that needs to happen there. And I wanna encourage all adults to keep working on themselves, if they feel the need to do that. Or if they, they feel,

Andrew: Or if they don't feel the need to do that, maybe work extra hard!

Dr. Val: Yes. Right. And, and, um, and. But to your original question, like how do you create a flexible enough system? I think Dr. Porter said it in the, in their interview, like, let's make our baseline really simple. Is this a humanizing experience?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: So. What would that mean?

She talked about there's no way to figure this out without talking with students, engaging them. And do they have some sense of agency? What, what made me cry in the episode obviously was when she talks about her definition of belonging and thinking about “the space belongs to you.”

And so, does this space belong to young people? How do we know? So, I think you actually had a great answer to the question. It's, it's a flexible environment where we have some simple baselines, where it's a humanizing experience. Will that take time? Will that take effort? Yes. I think where we're struggling is just living out the values that we say we believe in.

Andrew: I think you're exactly right and the hopeful part, the reassuring part is that Dr. Porter's research shows, if you work to create those spaces, you get the academic benefits that you might otherwise be looking for.

And you get all these other benefits too, right? So if your school is solely focused on boosting test scores, you can actually boost test, test scores.

That's effective. But, what you don't get is all these other benefits that come, like decreased discipline issues, increased college acceptance, and college completion rates. Increased graduation rates, like, all these other things that are really positive and beneficial things. Much more so for, sort of, society as a whole than just like, “Did you do better or not on a test?”

And so I think the hopeful piece of that is that if we do create those spaces, (which are not easy to create, but take time and energy), all of the positive benefits that can come from that if we do it.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And I think, you know, another challenge from a caregiver's perspective is that I would love a place for my child to belong. Love it. Love it! I also need them to know how to read. And parents have to decide, caregivers have to decide, most often than not, since it does not feel like you can get both of these things.

[Val laughs]

You can't, you can't get a sense of belonging and learn how to read in the same place!

That's awful!

[Andrew chuckles]

Um, I'm sure you can, just kidding! I know you can. But caregivers often have to decide, like, “What am I willing to supplement at the house?”

Because we have, caregivers have so many different hopes for school, it does become difficult to make sure that we meet all of them. And so, I don't want listeners who are educators to feel like we're asking them to do all of the things, because I think that's impossible.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: And so that's why I was really attracted to, like, these baseline ideas: is this humanizing? And the only way we know if this is humanizing is if we talk to the humans that we're serving.

Andrew: Right. We are certainly not trying to bash teachers. It’s systemic challenges. How do we set up systems that foster that? How do we create an education system that, that prioritizes humanity?

The research, which suggests that, that we all would benefit from that. That actually, kids would learn even more academically, but also have all these other, kind of, social and emotional skills that I think would make things better.

And that's, that is the, the hopeful piece of Dr. Porter's message, I think as well is, like, schools can be this place. They often aren't, and they often actually do the opposite, but they have the potential to be this place where we can kind of interrupt these messages and create this sense of belonging. And, and if you create a sense of belonging, you, you know, like you, you saw it with this one student.

That you created a sense of belonging in your classroom. And it was just one class out of the day. And so, it wasn't enough to overcome all the other messages of, “You don't belong here in school.” And so he ended up dropping out. But what if there were, you know, two teachers? Or what if there were three teachers, or what if there were five teachers? And what if, you know, when he walked into the building, he felt like he belonged?

What kind of different pathway could you imagine? And, and what if we–

Dr. Val: Mm.

Andrew: –did that for all kids?

Dr. Val: It would've made all the difference just to have two other teachers.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: All the difference. So I'm trying to be hopeful!

Andrew: Yes.

Dr. Val: So what do we do as caregivers with this message? I think this is the time where our, our parent advocacy really matters, right? So, every young person isn't necessarily going to show up and say, “I don't feel like I belong in this space.” But every adult can say, “Hey, I wanna make sure everybody feels like they belong here. What are some ways that we can do that?”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: “How can I help you with this? What is it that this school needs to make sure everybody belongs?” And I think, I think that's where our parent advocacy efforts can really make a difference right away.

So, I wanna challenge all of our listeners right now. Like, if you have not already signed up the volunteer form for your school and done your little background check to get to be a volunteer, make sure you do that. And then go volunteer! Right?

Andrew: And thinking about the modeling behavior that we want our kids to, to see, right? Like, when you show up in a volunteer space, is that humanity affirming? Are the meetings you're going to humanity centered? Are they creating space where everybody who can show up is showing up and feels like they, they belong?

Because we can't just, like, ask our kids to magically feel like they belong if we can't also give them some guidance on what that looks like. Show them a model of what that might look like. Go and show up, and then think about as you're showing up, what systems here are humanity affirming? What systems here are creating a sense of belonging?

It's hard to generalize, like, what makes that, what makes that feeling? Because, you know, you talk about your high school that you felt like you belonged in completely, and it was surrounded by barbed wire.

And you can imagine another barbed wire surrounded school that felt like it didn't belong to any kids. And you can imagine that there's, like, you know, safety measures that schools take that make kids feel safer and like they belong, and then we know there are safety measures that a lot of schools take that end up making kids feel like they don't belong.

And so, it's hard to say, like, “This is the path towards belonging,” but starting from that place of “What is humanity-centered” and then talking to kids, “Does this make you feel like you belong or not,” is, yeah, again, simple but not easy.

Dr. Val: And that, that safety one made me think, “And also we can't solve all the problems with the school.” So, I know schools feel like they have to have metal detectors 'cause they're trying to keep their kids safe from guns, then we need to deal with guns.

[Val chuckles]

And that's, and that's one thing that schools can be like, “Hey, country, this is on you!”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: This is on you.

Andrew: I mean, yeah, like let, yeah, let's take the circles out even wider. How do we create neighborhoods and cities in a country where everybody feels like they belong?

Dr. Val: Right. Yep.

Andrew: Yeah. Beautiful.

Dr. Val: This is beautiful.

Andrew: We got back to the hope! That was good.

Dr. Val: That was good!

Andrew: Super grateful to Dr. Porter for, for all of her research. There’ll be some links in the show notes to some of her papers. Uh, her stuff is very accessible, so if you wanna learn more, definitely check that out. A couple of, uh, newspaper articles written about her work as well will be in the show notes. Listeners, what do you think? Did you have a sense of belonging when you were in school? Does your current school create a sense of belonging for your kid, for other kids?

We want to hear about it. Send us your voice memos.

Dr. Val: Please call us! Like, we actually like listening to other people!

[Val chuckles]

Andrew: Very much so. Go to the website integratedschools.org. Click on the send voicemail button on the side. Or just uh, record us a voice memo and email it to podcast@integratedschools.org. We would love to hear from you.

Dr. Val: Awesome. Please listen to this podcast. You saw Andrew and I really dug in and, and to some of the talking points that were top of mind for us, and we trust that you'll be inspired to think and share this as well. So listen, share, listen again, take some action. That's the only way that we create the world in which we want our young people to grow up.

Andrew: Absolutely. The other way you can help create that world is by sending us a few dollars every month.

Dr. Val: That's right!

Andrew: patreon.com/integrated schools. We'd be grateful for the support. We've got some, uh, great transcripts that go out there and some, uh, facilitation questions that go out with every episode. And, uh, we will be scheduling our next happy hour coming up very shortly. So, join, come see us at happy hour, we'd love to chit chat with you. And send us your Brown v Board stories!

Dr. Val: Please!

Andrew: If you've got somebody in your life who was impacted by it, if you have your own story about it, if you've got something to share about the Brown versus Board of Education case, that will have been decided 70 years ago in May, we would love to hear it.

Again, send us a voice memo. Val, this was a great conversation. It's really a gift to me to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.