A Sense of Belonging

One of the challenging things about leadership is it is not a "do it by yourself" thing. Most of us who end up in positions with some influence made our way there in part because at some point in our career we were good at accomplishing tasks and projects. However, when we are asked to lead others, accomplishing tasks on our own isn't the appropriate skill set in many ways. So you have to develop a new skill set, one that allows you to help other people understand what you are trying to do, and then embrace and execute it. It's a very difficult change, and I think it helps explain why so many of us struggle when we get into a leadership role. The tools in our tool box which worked so well no longer serve us. It can be very disconcerting, and on our worst days make us want to walk away from what we are doing and retreat to what we know. If this sounds personal, well sure it is. Every career transition I've made has involved some level of dealing with this incongruity, and I think it's complicated for people like me who felt like outsiders early on and always will. Now I'm not sharing this to have you feel sorry for me and my career (I'm just fine), but to hopefully draw the parallel to the students and individuals we serve. Students in the crisis of poverty have an extensive set of tools they use to cross our threshold, but those tools don't always work in our colleges. So what do we do?

As I've tried to boil down this idea of poverty informed practice to something other folks can embrace and execute, three elements keep repeating: meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and accelerating progress toward stability. I would never rank them because I think they all are interdependent, but today I'd like to talk about the importance of a sense of belonging. I would argue one of the consequences of pursuing college from the crisis of poverty is a feeling of not quite fitting in anywhere. On a personal level, this makes sense to me. It's been a long time since my family or I struggled financially (and our struggles were far less than many), but if I'm honest, the residue of feelings from those days persist until now. Every time I share these feelings with students or colleagues who are or have been in the crisis of poverty, they can identify. This happens almost without exception. Think about that. It means students come to us with a belief the people around them don't really want them there. Our students are pretty sure they are impostors, and all too often we inadvertently confirm those feelings. So how do we help them know they do belong?

September 24th was our first Student Success day at Minnesota State College Southeast. I was a latecomer to the project as it had been initiated by my predecessor, and our Student Services team took the lead in planning it. My role was limited to support, encouragement, and participation. None of us were sure how it would go, but I'm pleased to say it was a hit at both campuses. Essentially we shut down classes for a day and faculty, staff, and external partners created workshop opportunities for students. Our student clubs and leadership groups also provided learning opportunities (on things like food insecurity!), and the afternoon was reserved for connecting with advising. The sessions offered were wildly eclectic, which reflected the grassroots nature of this day. There was financial aid and scholarship presentations, but we also had things like horses on campus to demonstrate equine massage. There were sessions on managing stress as a student and there were sessions on tuning pan drums (Did I mention we have really unique and cool music programs at MSC Southeast:)). There were lots of other sessions and activities and as a relative newcomer, I was able to see a thread that pulled it all together. My friend and mentor Dr. Donna Beegle talks frequently about identification theory as a tool for connecting with people in the crisis of poverty. My non-academic version is it's hard for people to hear you if they can't see something of themselves in you. Our eclectic sessions and informal atmosphere provided exactly that for our students, Students saw college staff in new ways. Students experienced sessions that connected with personal interests. And students saw college staff as people who wanted them there with us. The college was making every effort to be "us" rather than be "other." It was a pretty spectacular day, and I can't wait for the February version.


If you try to remember a mentor who made a difference in your life, they probably did lots of things. I've been lucky enough to have several good mentors, but they all had one characteristic in common. For me, they created a sense of safety, which was really another way of saying they made me feel like I belonged where I was. If you accept the poverty informed premise that we must love the students we have (not the ones we wish we had), how would you create the same experience for them? Would you be vulnerable enough to let them know a little bit about you in case they see themselves in your story? Would you fearlessly inventory your policies, practices, behaviors, facilities, and anything else you could identify to make sure there aren't messages of exclusion? This is the work it takes to begin to change our current outcomes and benefit our students, their families, and our communities.

I want to end by acknowledging how difficult this work can be. In recent years, I have given up a lot of the professional distance I used to maintain, and I'm encouraging you to do the same. I should be perfectly clear, we must all still be professional and ethical, but I think we have to be willing to let down our walls a little and let the student stories into our world. Being connected to the "why of the what" allows us to persevere when student journeys are non-linear, and on the days where our emotional investment leaves us in a place of vulnerability. Just this week, I had to deal with the fact a couple of students I had been pretty close to (in my prior life and in my new one) did things which were just not ok. Not only did that hurt me at a personal level, I'm always fearful it will lead to others thinking the work of including these students isn't worth it. That is the emotional risk of choosing to love the students you have and believing in them unconditionally. Sometimes it doesn't work out. I used to worry a lot more about these things, but in recent years, I've channeled my friend Cara Crowley and my answer is "So What." We don't stop doing the right thing because someone else didn't. We don't assign one person's behavior to an entire group (or we certainly shouldn't). This work can be lonely and uncomfortable on those days, and make no mistake there are people out there waiting for those moments of struggle to push you back to where you were. Can you imagine how the students feel in the same scenario? That's why creating a sense of safety and genuine belonging matters every day. That's why we do things alongside our students, and not just on their behalf.