Headmaster

Dr Alec O’Connell

Belonging

A local and global necessity

Over the 2022/2023 summer break, I was fortunate to be asked to present at the Round Schools Heads Symposium in London. While the topic is not what this article is about, the experience and context of my visit highlighted the importance of feeling like one belongs to somewhere or something, whether professionally, psychologically, or socially.

On the 17 February, The West Australian newspaper ran an article entitled ‘It’s the Great Brain Robbery’. For those old enough to remember Ronnie Biggs, the title is a clever play on another major UK event in the 60s. This article focused on the WA Government trying to attract UK citizens to leave their home in pursuit of money and lifestyle (code for sun). While it may work for some, country of origin, DNA and a person’s roots, still come into play when deciding to move. Why? because no matter the prevailing economic and lifestyle conditions,

one can never underestimate the strength of belonging for people. A sense of belonging grows even stronger the older one becomes, no matter how young a person may have been when they left their country of origin. In his 2021 book Belonging – The Ancient Code of Togetherness, Owen Eastwood highlights “we never want anybody to leave their culture at the door. To belong is to be seen and be respected for who you are.”

At the macro level, Scotch is part of two significant global organisations, the Round Square group of schools and the International Baccalaureate. These alliances are not driven solely by marketing, nor enrolment, nor to put a series of badges on our website. These alliances are driven by the desire to provide our students with a network centred on belonging beyond our boundaries on the global stage and with the goal of making our world a better place.

While at the Round Square Symposium I was very fortunate to hear Owen Eastwood speak first-hand about belonging and the impact his Māori heritage has had on his personal and professional formation. Owen’s work is focused on helping elite teams to engender a sense of belonging. From years of working with such teams he came to the following position, that is:

“Belonging is a wildly undervalued condition required for human performance.

When our need to belong in a team is met, our energy and focus pour into the team’s shared mission. We can lock into our role and the tasks we’re being asked to deliver. We are comfortable being vulnerable in our quest to get better. We feel secure enough to help others and point out where we could be better as a team.

We can be ourselves. We feel that we are respected and that we matter. We feel included. We can be a good teammate here. Our own identity, and that of the team happily coexist.

We are tuned into the legacy we are about to write. Whakapapa.”

Returning to why Scotch is part of the Round Square group of schools, the answer is simple. It is about helping our students develop a mindset which is character driven, thus providing experiential learning opportunities beyond academics and the classroom. It is about ensuring our students understand diversity in the real world, not just via academic constructs. Our students need to develop a strong sense of belonging in a world that has experienced a significant shift towards a context of polarised politics and ideologies based on fear and suspicion.

As a group of Round Square schools, we are colleagues, not competitors, and as such, our goal is to enhance us as a collective.

This very concept is captured in 1 Corinthians 12: 25 - 26 where it states “so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.”

There is a great saying that when the tide rises all boats follow. Individually, member schools do not have to prove they are better than each other, it is through sharing resources and experiences that membership of this organisation provides our students with a genuine opportunity to make the world a better place.

Belonging at the local level, in our context Scotch, is what really matters. Locally I hope that our students, their families and our OSCs experience a genuine sense of belonging.

As I said in the Feb 6 2023 edition of Thistle,

“I would like our Scotch community to experience a significant differentiator, that is, to experience the true meaning of belonging.

What do we mean by this? We sincerely hope that our boys and families experience a feeling of being happy, accepted, and welcome. Hopefully this will come from having positive interactions and relationship with those you meet, whether this be the teachers, admin and ancillary staff, fellow parents, Old Scotch Collegians, or any other member of the Scotch community.

In essence, a sense of belonging is one of humanity’s most basic needs and I hope this is experienced as being part of Scotch.”

From a historical perspective, during the time of hunters and gatherers, anyone who did not belong to a group or tribe, simply did not survive. Psychologist Abraham Maslow recognised this by placing belonging in his hierarchy of human needs.

At Scotch we must continue to remind ourselves that belonging is critical to everyone’s performance, that as members of our community, it is our role to tell stories about our identity and understand that belonging drives energy. We must be cognisant as to which things de-energise us and which things energise us. In essence, we must continue to focus on a seminal question, that is how do we create the best environment for everyone to thrive?

So, what does it mean to belong at Scotch? Belonging is our hope. Can we tell ‘the story of us?’ Do we know who we are and where we belong? The graduates we aspire to develop, must know the story of who we are, so that in turn, we can form who they become. It is not just about today. Remember that it is only last year that we celebrated 125 years since our commencement. We are simply a line of people who are connected to the past and move into the future. Eastwood shared a great analogy in that the sun will shine on you at some stage in your journey, but you need to capture and articulate how you got there and how the sun will shine on others in the future.

At Scotch we have already captured this in one of our three core values, ‘Stewardship.’ All of us must understand, especially myself as Headmaster, exactly what we are the guardian of now. What we do or do not do will be the legacy we leave. What we leave must create the conditions for the next generation, and in my case set the tone for the next leader of this community.

We must all decide on what chapter we want to write now, and what do we do to sustain connections with those who have already left our school. The former is an ongoing journey via our strategic focus and the resourcing of essential projects to ensure we continue to move forward. Any organisation that remains the same, is simply going backwards.

The latter is answered by our ongoing focus of engaging with the OSCs.

In 1972, George Seddon wrote Sense of Place, recording his experience and research into the Swan Coastal Plain. His work helped create a contemporary sense of place. To belong we must create a sense of place for ourselves and when our community experience a true ‘sense of place’ then our sense of belonging will be enhanced to the benefit of everyone.

Whether at the local or global level the importance of belonging is so succinctly captured by Hugh McKay in his 2021 book, The Kindness Revolution: How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism.

“We thrive on our sense of belonging to families, neighbourhoods and all kinds of groups and communities. We utterly depend upon our social connections for our emotional and physical security, for our sense of well-being, being accepted and taken seriously.”

At Scotch we must continue to create the environment and a community that encourages a sense of belonging. In turn a strong sense of belonging will contribute to three core elements which help us to grow and succeed, building and sustaining our College, setting clear directions for the future, and creating lifelong alignment.