Student Belonging Through Routine Connection-Building (FLEX Online)

Overview

This brief case study features the work one school system completed to address the challenge of student belonging in their virtual and hybrid learning environment. It is part of a larger brief exploring the work that three school system teams undertook in TLA’s Strategy Lab program, which is a networked learning experience that leverages our Real-Time Redesign (RTR) process to help teams identify and address root-cause equity barriers.

Context: Beaverton School District

FLEX Online, a large, virtual school within the Beaverton School District, serves 1,430 K-12 students and describes their instructional model as a combination of asynchronous and synchronous coursework as well as in-person learning activities. They joined Strategy Lab to learn how to increase the representation of student and family voices to create a strong sense of belonging within the broader school community beyond the classroom.

The Challenge: Secondary-Level Gaps in Participation and Connection

As part of their participation in the Strategy Lab, the FLEX Online team identified a core challenge: how to use current systems and structures to foster connectedness and engagement.

Evidence from their team assessment revealed that school leaders believed teachers consistently worked to be visibly present in their synchronous and asynchronous classes. However, the district also shared that they are in the beginning stages of supporting students’ social-emotional needs, non-academic interests, and using collaborative activities to promote a sense of belonging and community. Despite strongly communicating the importance of prioritizing relationships, the team perceived gaps in building connections and engagement, specifically at the secondary level.

Principal observations of Zoom classes confirmed that students did not interact with the teacher or each other. The district team surmised that even though most of their teachers were experienced educators, the district needed to concentrate their efforts on helping teachers make the shift from in-person to remote instruction – including acquiring knowledge around how to design effective online instruction to facilitate greater student interaction.

The leadership team recognized the importance of improving belonging in their classroom cultures. Continued conversations around existing policies and practices led the team to identify a problem of practice: how to redesign synchronous time and support teachers to strengthen relationships among students, peers, and teachers.

Designing and Piloting a Measurable Solution: Training Teachers to Include Intentional, Non-Academic Routines

The FLEX Online decided to design a pilot program that would educate teachers on designing effective virtual instruction specifically focused on strategies to help students and teachers build relationships. The pilot focused on two core concepts:

Directly Engaging and Supporting Teachers: The team first engaged teachers to help increase their understanding around the importance of relationship-building and its connection to students’ motivation for learning. The pilot team provided teachers with strategies to build engagement, understanding that ongoing professional development would be key to ensuring teachers can meet the ever-changing needs of their students. Two ninth-grade teachers participated in professional development sessions and volunteered to model and implement the strategies they learned during those sessions with their classes.

Implementing Intentional Synchronous Conversations: The inspiration for the pilot came from a teacher who shared the benefits of instituting a welcome routine for her virtual students. The team implemented routine, structured conversations to foster deliberate connections among students, peers, and teachers. In this case, the pilot teachers began their synchronous sessions with a non-academic activity called “Good News.” Through structured conversations, the teachers modeled how to conduct and participate in discussions within a safe and open space. This activity provided both teachers and their students with an opportunity to connect on a personal level by sharing positive updates from their lives with the class.

What Happened

Pilot high school teachers reported that the quality of what students shared improved. While overall total sharing decreased after the initial pilot kick-off, overall participation was more distributed, as different individual students shared their personal updates. Teachers enjoyed feeling more connected to students, and the team believed that this pilot created a safe space for sharing.

What’s Next

The district leadership team is planning to use the lessons they learned from the pilot to iterate and try this process once again. They are looking to create a playbook (onboarding document) for the upcoming year that covers common structures and systems (e.g., how to start class, etiquette, expectations). Additionally, the team intends to offer professional development to guide teachers through the playbook as well as provide time for them to collaborate on classroom routines that are authentic and foster connection-building.