this letter from a student in Illinois:
As I started my 8th grade year, things got tougher. School got harder, friends got meaner, and I felt like there was no one I could talk to. Soon after that, I started cutting. It became a regular thing for me. Feel sad, grab scissors, feel better. (Rachel’s Challenge, 2015, p. 7)
Clearly, feelings of belonging (or the lack thereof) immediately affect the emotional health of students. When left unaddressed, such feelings can cause destructive behaviors, sometimes evolving into suicidal thoughts:
In my school, I’m known as the “loner,” the “emo;” people just don’t care enough to get to know me. I once dreamed, but the way I’ve been treated caused me to give up. This has had such a negative effect on me, I suffer from depression. I developed a plan for suicide and almost carried it through. (Rachel’s Challenge, 2015, p. 31)
The previous quotations are featured in Saved by a Story: Letters of Transformation and Hope, a book that compiles thank-you notes received by Rachel’s Challenge (2015). The booklet contains dozens of letters from students who, when their needs for belonging went unmet at school, physically harmed themselves, attempted suicide, or bullied other students. Once these students felt they belonged at school, their negative outlooks were transformed, as exemplified at the end of the letter from the student in Illinois:
I realized there are people who care about me, and people I care about. I realized that I could die tomorrow, and that I didn’t want to leave this world thinking I had no one. (Rachel’s Challenge, 2015, p. 7)
Such examples highlight the importance of a sense of belonging, particularly because meeting such needs mitigates negative mindsets that may contribute to students’ dangerous behaviors. In an analysis of previous research on the topic, Xin Ma (2003) found that a sense of belonging among students was positively related to the following factors.
▸ Engagement in class
▸ Persistence with difficult work
▸ Positive attitudes toward other racial-ethnic groups
▸ Students’ expectations of academic success
▸ Intrinsic interest in academic work
▸ Higher course grades
▸ Teachers’ ratings of students’ academic effort
The same study found that a sense of belonging was also negatively correlated with high school incompletion rates and student involvement with gangs, substance abuse, and delinquency.
Safety
Safety needs fall into the second-lowest level of the hierarchy. Safety, in this sense, can be defined as a feeling of order, fairness, and predictability that ultimately reduces or eliminates physical or emotional harm. In other words, after individuals’ physiological needs (level 1 of the hierarchy) are met, they will seek out spaces where they feel secure. Teachers should also note the difference between actual and perceived safety. Actual safety relates to the real or genuine danger that individuals might encounter, whereas perceived safety relates to people’s opinions about how safe they are. Regardless of whether students feel or actually are unsafe, the effect is the same: they will endeavor to meet their safety needs by trying to escape or reduce the real or imagined threat rather than focusing on academics (Maslow, 1943, 1954).
While some people would argue that U.S. schools are becoming less and less safe, research indicates otherwise. Schools are better equipped now than they have ever been to ensure students’ safety. Some have metal detectors at their entrances, and many have school resource officers. The total victimization rate for students between the ages of twelve and eighteen has decreased since 1992, as has the total number of student homicides per year (Robers, Zhang, Morgan, & Musu-Gillette, 2015). Furthermore, from 1995 to 2013, the percentage of students who feared going to school because they felt a threat of attack or harm decreased from 12 percent to 3 percent (Robers et al., 2015). In sum, most schools do a very good job of keeping their students physically safe and contributing to students’ perception of safety. Despite this, there is still work to be done. It is notable that in 2013, 5 percent of students avoided at least one activity or place during school hours because of a perceived threat to their safety (Robers et al., 2015).
Physiology
The lowest level of Maslow’s hierarchy involves the most basic of human needs related to physiological comfort. When unmet, the ability to focus on any of the higher levels of the hierarchy is inhibited. For example, if an individual is too hungry, thirsty, or tired, he or she must eat, drink, or sleep before focusing on anything else. From an evolutionary perspective, these needs ensure that an environment meets the minimum conditions for survival. Generally, schools do a fairly good job of providing for students’ physiological needs. Cafeterias provide sustenance, and school buildings are heated during the winter and often cooled during warmer months. Many schools have resource officers, administrators, and counselors who actively monitor students to ensure that their physiological needs are met and who work with students, parents, and outside entities when they are not.
Despite this attention, much of the scope of students’ physiological needs falls outside of the schools’ direct control. For example, in a survey of a thousand U.S. educators, three out of four public school teachers taught students who regularly came to school hungry, and four out of five of those educators identified the problem as recurring on at least a weekly basis (No Kid Hungry, 2015). Katherine M. Keyes, Julie Maslowsky, Ava Hamilton, and John Schulenberg (2015) found that eighth-grade and high school students get less sleep than their counterparts did years ago and that only around 14 percent of adolescents felt they got enough sleep each night. These statistics point to the frequency with which certain physiological needs go unmet among students, which in turn translates into behavioral or learning problems.
Research and Theory in Practice
The hierarchy of needs and goals presented in this chapter provides a framework K–12 educators can use to create schools and classrooms in which students are motivated and inspired. Chapters 2 through 7 each contain strategies related to a specific level of the hierarchy, with chapter 2 containing strategies related to the highest level of the hierarchy (connection to something greater than self) and chapter 7 containing strategies related to the lowest level (physiology). Each chapter ends with a section containing a summary of its strategies, general recommendations for implementation, and a vignette showing how the recommendations might manifest in a classroom. Teachers can use the strategies and recommendations for all the chapters together to ensure all students are not only engaged and attentive but also motivated and inspired during class. While this book presents a complete model for responding to students’ unmet needs at all levels of the hierarchy, teachers might choose to focus on one level of the hierarchy at a time, especially if they notice that their students need extra support at a particular level. To get a better sense of students’ needs across a school, the appendix (page 158) contains a free reproducible survey that schools can use to determine how effectively they address students’ needs at each level of the hierarchy.
Connection to something greater than self is the highest level of human needs and goals. While a sustained connection is not easily acquired, teachers can design their classrooms to provide
