Joyce V. Brown

My educational journey began at a large urban high school on the Southside of Chicago. I am a born and raised “Chicago Girl” who always wanted to teach in the inner city. I spent 34 years at Kenwood Academy, a high school where the culture was built on the expectation that faculty would embrace practices to connect students to school through sponsoring extracurricular activities.

I still remember my first day on the job. I was a first-year teacher, only four years older than the seniors, and I was often mistaken for one of them. My youthful appearance caused me to focus on how to gain respect. I feared encountering discipline issues because I looked so young. But I soon discovered an antidote to discipline challenges: making caring adult/student connections. I saw my teacher colleagues dedicate numerous hours to sponsoring activities, and this commitment decreased their students’ discipline issues.

After 12 years of teaching, I became a school counselor, who fully engaged in student advocacy. Along the way, I raised my hand multiple times to sponsor numerous extracurricular activities—to support the strategy of connecting students to school. I wanted students to experience the benefits of being appropriately engaged, and I wanted them to appreciate their learning environment. When students are disengaged from their school experience, do not believe that adults in the school care about them, and don’t have good relationships with peers, they become disruptive, which leads to discipline referrals.

Students enter school each day with a variety of mindsets and behaviors, and they must learn to identify, value, and follow the rules. Rule-​following is enhanced when schools acknowledge the value of extracurricular participation to develop positive relationships with both peers and adults. Joining activities helps students develop a sense of belonging to school and ultimately decreases unacceptable behaviors.

Addressing the Feeling of Not Belonging

School leaders must consider monitoring both academic progress and social development by establishing systems that engage students in extracurricular activities. Monitoring participation is a no-cost initiative that can reduce discipline referrals. As administrators try to decrease discipline challenges, they must remember that undesirable student behaviors are often rooted in feelings of not belonging and disengagement—feelings that can change when students join teams and clubs.

School counselors play a key role in engagement. Their leadership can be leveraged to identify students who need to feel a sense of belonging. Empowering counselors to monitor extracurricular engagement data can help to address the mindsets and behaviors preventing academic success. From my lived experience as a teacher, school counselor, and district administrator, I recognize the value of organizing structures and routines to connect students to caring adults.

Action Steps

There are two simple steps that school leaders can take to implement a student engagement discipline plan:

  1. Review the number of existing extracurricular activities to which students can belong.
  2. Empower counselors to track team and club participation, and enlist them to conduct surveys to identify students who do not participate.

Karen Calloway, the principal of my former high school Kenwood Academy, follows this plan because she has seen firsthand how extracurricular participation contributes to positive student behavior. She has implemented a schoolwide strategy of putting in place numerous teams and clubs so that students have multiple opportunities to connect to school activities.

Most important is the second component of this plan: intentionally tracking student participation and noticing who is not engaged as early as high school entry. At Kenwood, intentional freshman events include Freshman Open House, Bronco Beginnings (Bronco is the school mascot), and Freshman Welcome Week. Central to these activities is the vision of students themselves selecting their activities. Participation in such events and activities sets the foundation for students feeling connected to their new environment and helps acclimate them to the school. Freshman activities are introduced by student mentors from sports teams and clubs, and these students convey just how important is to be involved in activities outside of the classroom. These student volunteers share peer-to-peer insights, including how fulfilling their high school experience has been because of their connection to extracurricular activities.

Kenwood Class of 1972 50th Class Reunion, which Joyce V. Brown attended.

The school also drives additional engagement by using a survey to gauge the interests of students who are not involved in extracurricular activities, followed by one-to-one meetings with team and club representatives. Continuous outreach takes place through constant emails, announcements, and flyers. Extracurricular activities are also embedded in advisory lessons. New strategies are added yearly, and the school maintains a broad range of activities for students to join. The overarching goal is to provide students with multiple points of belonging. Students and staff can also start their own clubs, which helps to ensure there are numerous opportunities to get connected.

It is not so much that teaching and learning make students feel connected to adults but rather the experiences and caring relationships that result in a sense of belonging, which, in turn, can decrease discipline referrals. Practices must convey that, “I see you. I see what you need, and I am here to help.” They must also send the message that students don’t have to act out to get attention.

In the school setting, these ideas are grounded in three practices:

  1. Engaging student voice
  2. Engaging students in activities
  3. Monitoring and recognizing student belonging, such that students take pride in attending their school

An Engagement Framework

Student behaviors can be influenced by teachers, other students, school policy, and practice.To ensure that your school accounts for these various influences, I suggest creating a framework that includes the following:

  • Student Leadership and Student Voice Opportunities. Invite team captains and club presidents to serve on the principal’s leadership cabinet.
  • Peer Mentor Programs. Engage upperclassmen to mentor freshmen and sophomores, guiding them toward positive behaviors.
  • Student/Parent Surveys. Use surveys to provide administrators with feedback on a variety of issues and strengthen school-home connections.
  • School Counselor Leadership. Enable school counselors to address behavior concerns by having a minimum of four intentional career and college conversations with every student on their caseload. Also, enable school counselors to access data so they can monitor and distribute quarterly BAG (Behavior, Attendance, Grades) reports to students and parents. Intentional communication with established points of information delivered to students and families enables educators and families to celebrate student success and identify areas of need.

I know from experience that this model works. After all, what would make my former students track down me—their teacher—to attend their 50th high school reunion? The answer is the love and care they received throughout their high school experience that resulted in a strong bond to their school and to each other. Kenwood’s motto is “Bronco for Life.” These words exemplify the true sense of belonging and the importance of intentional school connections to student success.

Joyce V. Brown, EdD, is an educational consultant and president of Joyce V. Brown Consulting Group (providing college and workforce readiness coaching) and a founding partner in the National Postsecondary Strategy Institute, which supports school districts with postsecondary planning. A former teacher and counselor, she previously served as the district director of school counseling for Chicago Public Schools.