The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [212]
What Schools Can Do: By improving the well-being of their students, administrators improve the overall success of the school. Many researchers have demonstrated that the “sense of belonging to school is critical to the success of public education.” See Ma, Xin. “Sense of Belonging to School: Can Schools Make a Difference?” The Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 96, No. 6, July-August 2003. Ma also writes: “Unless students identify well with their schools (i.e., feel welcomed, respected, and valued), their education participation always will be limited. . . . Gang-related problems increase when students do not have a sense of belonging to their school.”
western Missouri middle school: Thank you to the students who participated in the discussion and the administrators who organized it for me.
“Some people want to sit”: Interview.
“Mix It Up at Lunch Day”: Teaching Tolerance is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. See www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up/lunch-day.
Teachers who open their rooms: At many schools, teachers do not have their own classrooms. These teachers can help students by helping them to find a safe space in which to spend the lunch hour.
“are generally defiant”: Interview.
University of Delaware: See Gaertner, Samuel L.; Dovidio, John F.; Guerra, Rita; Rebelo, Margarida; Monteiro, Maria Benedicto; Riek, Blake M.; and Houlette, Melissa A. “The Common In-Group Identity Model: Applications to Children and Adults,” Intergroup Attitudes . . .
“The best way to achieve peace”: See, for example, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. “Those People,” The Boston Globe, January 6, 2008.
significantly reduce alcohol: See, for example, Haines, M.; Barker, G.; and Rice, R. “Using Social Norms To Reduce Alcohol And Tobacco Use in Two Midwestern High Schools,” The Social Norms Approach to Preventing School and College Age Substance Abuse: A Handbook for Educators, Counselors, and Clinicians, H. W. Perkins, ed., San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003. I also consulted FCD materials. See also Neighbors, Clayton; Fossos, Nicole; Woods, Briana A.; Fabiano, Patricia; Sledge, Michael; and Frost, Deborah. “Social Anxiety as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Perceived Norms and Drinking,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Vol. 68, No. 91, January, 2007.
“Informational campaigns stress”: See Cialdini, Robert B. “Basic Social Influence Is Underestimated,” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005.
the robotics club’s success: Interview, Christine Zaremba.
“We’re the kings of the nerds”: See Peim, Benjamin. “B’klyn ‘Nerd Herd’ wins NY Lego robot contest, now striving to raise cash for Robotics World Fest,” New York Daily News, March 26, 2009. The St. Edmund’s principal told the press, “This has just been the most amazing day. Kids actually think being a nerd is cool now.” See Hutchinson.
“We’re teaching our students”: Interview, Zaremba.
they would have been lost: Interviews.
“When I moved to Dallas”: Interview.
“I’m just as guilty”: Interview.
“Sometimes adults get too focused”: Interviews.
“I’ve made efforts”: Interview.
“It may not seem like much”: Interview.
The British government funneled: See, for example, Shepherd, Jessica. “Fertile minds need feeding: Are schools stifling creativity?”, The Guardian, February 10, 2009.
United Kingdom able to invest: Ibid.; Interview, Pamela Burnard.
Sachse High School: Interview, Cheryl Beard. Thank you to Diane Wilcox for facilitating the group discussion with teachers and administrators in which I first learned about Sachse’s reading program, and to Andrea Bottorff, the teacher who first told me about it.
Improve clique relations—among staff: “In a philosophical examination of issues related to sense of belonging, Edwards (1995) advocated that school administrators ensure that teachers must feel a sense of belonging to school so that they, in turn, can help their students feel a sense of belonging.” See Ma, Xin.
“a hostile environment