Higher Degrees Research and Honours

Teenage years are some of the hardest years of our lives. We start trying to figure out who we are and what we want to do. Of those four very formative years we spend about 4,900 hours in class so we should make those hours count, right?

I went to a really competitive high school and it was clear to me that some of these kids were not making the most of their time. Many of them slept through the classes that they did come to and flat-out refused to do any homework like this guy. Let's call him Bob.

Some of them will love school and did really well and tried really hard like this girl, we can call her Sally. Before my eyes, those kids that were doing well kept doing better, and the kids that were doing poorly kept doing increasingly worse. Unfortunately, school separates teens based on willingness to jump through hoops. Something that it wasn't designed to do but it does very well.

Bob doesn't want to jump through the hoops but Sally does it very well and their different performances reflect that we've all known kids like Bob who just didn't want to be in school. Some of us may have even been like Bob. It's sad because when you think about it, we were all so into school when you were young so what changes? Why do kids stop wanting to engage in school once they reach their teens, which is when it really matters?

Many of them say things like school isn't for me or I'm never going to use this stuff again. Essentially they feel like they don't belong in school.

So what is belonging? Belonging is the extent to which an individual feels accepted or respected in their school. It involves the students perception of the school climate and how well they think they fit into what they see. If we want to help the teens who feel like school isn't for them we want to boost those feelings of belonging in school.