What would a blueprint of belonging actually require a predominantly white private school to build — and how would the school know the building worked?
Why the question matters
Schools like mine are full of belonging language and short on belonging architecture. A mission statement can say every student belongs while the first week, the support class, the discipline conversation, and the hiring committee all say something else. If my dissertation only documents the gap, it leaves the next teacher with a diagnosis and no tools. The blueprint of belonging is my name for the constructive half of the work: a plan with measurements, not a poster.
What I currently think
I keep coming back to four load-bearing walls: welcome, support, scaffold, retain. Welcome is arrival — the first morning, the name read right, the family letter that assumes membership. Support is what happens when a student struggles — whether help arrives as a normal part of the school or as a marked, stigmatized track. Scaffold is the teaching itself — whether the structure that helps a neurodivergent student or a student new to the work is built into the room or bolted on as an exception. Retain is the part schools like mine rarely examine — whether the students we welcomed are still here, still thriving, three years later, and who quietly left. The blueprint has to hold for every student the bubble of normalcy has pushed out: BIPOC students, neurodivergent students, students marginalized for gender identity, and the crossings between them. And it has to be checkable — a blueprint you cannot inspect against the building is just a wish.
What I am reading & learning
- —Goodenow (1993), The psychological sense of school membership
- —Walton & Cohen (2007), A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement
- —Osterman (2000), Students' need for belonging in the school community
- —Strayhorn (2012), College students' sense of belonging
- —Ladson-Billings (2009), The Dreamkeepers
- —Harley (2023), The lived experiences of Black girls at a predominantly White independent school
Related journal entries
- Naming the destination: the blueprint of belonging
I have a name for what I want the dissertation to leave behind: a blueprint of belonging — a buildable plan for how a predominantly white private school welcomes, supports, scaffolds, and retains its BIPOC and marginalized students, including neurodivergent students and students pushed outside the bubble of normalcy for gender identity or any other reason.
- The title my professor gave me
My working title was too chunky and too broad, and my professor said so. Her suggestion narrows it to the crossroads I actually care about: BIPOC students at the intersection of neurodiversity, in my particular school, and how their sense of belonging influences achievement.