If you ask an adult about their most important school experiences they are likely to reminisce about a teacher who made them feel seen and heard or an extracurricular activity that they poured their heart into even though it didn’t count towards graduation. They are less likely to talk about their grade point average and class ranking.
As humans, we have a deep desire to know that we belong, that we are needed, and accepted for who we are, that we matter. Mattering is something that unlocks purpose, connection, and wellbeing and has many related and interrelated concepts like; flourishing, belonging, meaning and purpose, and relatedness.
The full depth of feeling that you matter takes more than a single teacher treating you with respect, and the reality is that creating a genuine sense of mattering in our schools is a big challenge. In many ways our society, institutions, and culture have left us on our own when it comes to feeling like you matter. This is not something that can be done alone. Authentic mattering is both social and relational. It is developed or perhaps co-developed within the context of human relationships, communities, families, societies, and cultures. Schools can be places that prioritize the full depth of mattering and in this way, extend mattering outward into our greater communities.
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It is revealing that extracurricular activities are places where we often find meaning and purpose. By definition they exist outside of the day-to-day classroom. They might be a field trip, a sports team, or a theater performance. They are times and spaces where the normal measures of success like tests and grades become less relevant. Those external measurements give way to shared experiences, authentic contributions to the group, and a sense of belonging.
When the curtains go up on the musical that you have been rehearsing for the last six weeks, your attendance isn’t just a number in the student portal, it is necessary for the play to go on. The audience is more important than a grade. Your castmates’ success is your success, too. On the stage, the playing field, and in the newsroom you are learning lessons that go beyond lectures and homework.
If we would like our students to be able to leave the classroom and enter the world with a strong sense of self-mattering and self-understanding we need to foster more opportunities for students to belong to these types of communities of giving and receiving. Students will best develop a sense of mattering in spaces where they can both contribute, share, and participate but also where they can ask for help, be vulnerable, make mistakes, and rely on others. Developing a sense that “I matter” requires something more like, “I matter with others” or more simply “I belong.”
We need to learn from these places where schools already make students feel like they matter and figure out ways to make this experience typical rather than merely extracurricular.
