The Conversation Schools Need to Have
Belonging has become one of the most discussed topics in education circles, and for good reason. But the conversation doesn’t always move beyond the surface. In a recent episode of The Table, I sat down with Peyten Williams, founder of BowBend Consulting and former director of teaching and learning at Westminster Schools in Atlanta, to talk about what belonging actually looks like in practice and what both parents and educators need to understand to make it real for kids.
Peyten brings 16 years in education to this work, and what makes her perspective particularly valuable is that she bridges two worlds most people keep separate: the classroom and the home. Her frameworks are grounded in research and shaped by real experience working with students, teachers, and families.
Belonging Is a Brain Science Issue
One of the first things Peyten clarified is that belonging isn’t a soft concept. It’s neurological. Drawing on Maslow’s hierarchy and the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs, she explained that belonging and significance are among our most fundamental human needs. “Students can’t learn if they don’t feel safe,” she said, “and what makes you feel safe is if you belong and if you’re significant.”
This is consistent with the research coming out of positive discipline frameworks, which Peyten has studied and applied extensively. Every behavior a child exhibits, including the disruptive ones, can be understood as a movement toward belonging. When educators and parents understand that, their entire lens on student behavior shifts.
Peyten also referenced Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s book Never Enough, in which Wallace interviewed students from high-achieving schools and surfaced a profound gap between achievement and genuine mattering. Peyten connected this directly to her own consulting work: “When adults can help children be empowered to belong and know that they matter, the learning happens, the good behavior happens.”
Teachers Are Hosts. Students Are Guests.
One of the most useful frameworks Peyten shared is a reframe on the teacher-student dynamic. Adults, she noted, already have power when they walk into a room. They have title, context, and belonging built in. Students, on the other hand, arrive as guests in a space that belongs to someone else.
“The greatest teachers are the ones that are great hosts,” she said, “and let students feel like, gosh, we are so glad you’re here.”
This isn’t just a feel-good sentiment. It has real instructional consequences. Teachers who operate as though it doesn’t matter who shows up, focusing more on content delivery than on the humans receiving it, tend to have more behavior challenges and lower engagement. When a teacher shifts that perspective and sees themselves as a host with an active responsibility to welcome, everything changes.
This framing applies to parents navigating the teenage years as well. As kids grow and seek independence, parents can start to feel excluded from their children’s lives. Peyten notes that this tension is normal, and understanding belonging dynamics can help parents respond to that pull with more grace and less reactivity.
Reading the Signs: When a Child Doesn’t Feel Like They Belong
Peyten pointed to the Positive Discipline Mistaken Goals Chart as a practical tool for interpreting student and child behavior. Rather than labeling kids as difficult or disengaged, the chart invites adults to ask: what need is this behavior trying to meet?
The behaviors to watch for include:
- Power struggles: A student who refuses to comply or pushes back isn’t necessarily defiant. They may be trying to establish that they matter.
- Attention-seeking behaviors: The student who can’t sit still, who makes noise, who keeps finding ways to be seen. This is often a signal that they don’t feel noticed in a meaningful way.
- Disengagement and withdrawal: Putting their head on the desk, checking out, not participating. These can indicate a child who has given up trying to belong.
Peyten shared that when she taught middle school, one student consistently disrupted class with his rolling chair antics. Looking back, she recognized it clearly: he struggled socially and had found a reliable way to get her attention. The behavior was a request for connection, not defiance.
For parents, the moment your child finds every reason to interrupt you the instant you pick up your phone is the same signal. “They just want to be reminded that they belong,” Peyten said.
The Gap Between What Parents Want and What’s Happening at Home
Peyten sees a consistent pattern in her consulting work: parents deeply want confident, grounded kids, but they’ve inadvertently built home environments that undercut that goal. Often, it comes from doing too much.
“A lot of parents burn out because they’re taking on responsibilities that are not theirs,” she said. When parents invest their own identity in their child’s performance, a 75 on a math test becomes a referendum on their worth as a parent. That pressure is unsustainable, and it communicates the wrong things to kids.
The reframe Peyten offers is a long-term vision. What qualities are you actually trying to build in your child over 18 years? Independence, character, resilience? If that’s the goal, a bad quiz grade is an opportunity, not a crisis. “Their mistakes aren’t a reflection on you as a parent. They’re an opportunity for you to parent.”
What Educators Don’t Always See About Families
On the flip side, Peyten was equally direct about the blind spots educators carry into their relationships with families. Teachers at independent schools in particular often underestimate how much is happening in a family’s life outside of school. “When we are teaching their kids, parents are also doing so much outside of school,” she noted, “whether it’s driving them to sports practice or music practice or getting extra tutoring.”
When a child isn’t completing homework or seems disengaged, the default assumption of bad parenting misses a much more complex reality. Peyten’s recommendation is to lead with curiosity. Ask what homework time looks like at home. Ask what’s going on in the evenings. That kind of inquiry builds the relational trust that makes real partnerships possible.
Where the Parent-Educator Relationship Breaks Down
Peyten named feedback, specifically the inability to receive it well, as the most common fracture point in the parent-teacher relationship.
When a teacher shares a concern about a child, parents often hear it as an indictment rather than useful information. When a parent raises a concern with a school, administrators can become defensive. Peyten’s advice to schools is particularly worth sitting with: “When one parent is brave enough to give you feedback, they are not the only parent that feels that way.”
The posture she recommends on both sides is curiosity over defensiveness. She pointed to the book Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen as a resource that helps people receive hard information without shutting down. Parents who lead with curiosity when their child gets a difficult grade, and educators who do the same when a family raises a concern, build the kind of relationship that actually serves students.
Restorative Practices at Home and at School
Peyten’s work is deeply connected to restorative practices, and she made a point that doesn’t get made often enough: restoration belongs at home, not just in schools.
She described restorative practice as starting from an assumption of grace and humility, acknowledging that everyone, including teachers, parents, and kids, will make mistakes. The question is what happens next. “Instead of kicking people out, we help you scaffold through making amends and making it right.”
She was careful to be clear that restoration doesn’t mean an absence of consequences. “You actually can’t love without justice. There is no community without standards.” What restorative practice adds is the step after consequences: the active work of returning someone to the community, not just as if nothing happened, but with their belonging intact and affirmed.
Peyten offered a practical home application: apologies in her family require eye contact, the actual words “I am sorry,” and a genuine question about how to make it right. The offhand “sorry” directed at no one in particular doesn’t count. That expectation applies to her as a parent, too.
And she extended this to schools thinking about family retention: “If a family feels like, look, we’re going to work so hard that even when you mess up, we’re going to make sure you feel like you belong… that is love embodied right there.”
One Thing to Try This Week
Peyten’s practical recommendations:
For educators: Mix up your seating assignments intentionally and regularly. Peyten used index cards with student names, shuffling them each day so that by the end of September, every student had sat next to and talked with every other student. Belonging can’t be left to chance social dynamics.
For parents: Start a weekly family meeting. Open with your family motto or values, give each person a chance to offer a genuine compliment to someone else in the family, address one issue that someone has raised, and close with something fun together. The compliment piece in particular is a powerful and underutilized tool for helping children feel like they matter.
Final Thought
What Peyten Williams is doing through BowBend Consulting is something schools and families both need. She’s translating what we know about belonging and brain science and restorative practice into language and habits that are actually usable at home and in classrooms. The work of raising children who know they belong isn’t reserved for counselors or consultants. It lives in the daily decisions of parents and teachers who are willing to be strong and kind adults in the room.
To connect with Peyten, visit bowbendconsulting.com or follow her on Instagram at @epd_williams (parenting content) and @bowbend_consulting (school-focused content).
