How Can People Promote Belonging in Their Communities?

About This Mini-Lesson

This is the fifth lesson in a five-part series on hate crimes and their impacts, created in partnership with the Office of the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC), part of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit.

One of the main impacts of hate crimes, as students have learned in the previous lessons, is that they make it more difficult for both the direct target and those who share—or are perceived as sharing—an aspect of their identity with hate crime victims to feel belonging and safety in their communities. In this lesson, students explore three examples of community initiatives that work to promote such belonging and safety, which can help to counteract some of the impacts that hate crimes have on people’s sense of community, belonging, and safety. Finally, students consider what actions they, their schools, or their communities can take to foster a greater sense of belonging for all.

Mini-Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Where Do You Feel a Sense of Belonging?

Begin by asking students to respond to the following prompt in their journals:

• Close your eyes and imagine a place where you feel a sense of belonging and safety. Then open your eyes and reflect:
  • What does the place look like? 
  • How do you feel when you are there? 
  • Who else is there in this place? What do you share with them?

When students have finished writing, share the following question with them:

• Based on what you wrote, what do you think are the elements that help people feel belonging and safety in a place?

Ask students to write their answers on sticky notes and place the sticky notes on a board in your classroom. (Alternatively, you could ask students to add their words or phrases to a word cloud.) 

One of the main impacts of hate crimes, as students have learned, is that they make it more difficult for both the direct target of the hate crime and those who share an aspect of their identity with the victims to feel a sense of belonging and safety in their communities. Explain to students that in this lesson, they will learn about community initiatives that are designed to promote people’s sense of safety and belonging. Initiatives such as these can help to counteract some of the impacts that hate crimes have on people’s sense of community, belonging, and safety.

Activity 2: How Have Communities Worked to Promote Belonging and Safety?

This activity is organized around the Big Paper strategy. Print the Big Paper: How Have Communities Worked to Promote Belonging and Safety? handout and place each example on a large piece of poster paper. 

Note: The original photo used in Example 2 contains profanity in the background. For a version without profanity, pause the Inside Edition video “Black Teen Ballerinas Reclaim Space Home to Robert E. Lee Statue With Photo Shoot” at 0:06 and share that image with your students instead.

Place students in groups of three or four and give each group one paper. Students should write their questions and comments on the paper. They can respond to each other in writing but should remain silent. 

Once students have finished “discussing” their first text, ask them to rotate to read each of the other papers and add any additional questions or comments in writing.

After students have read and commented on each text, discuss the following questions as a class:

• What did you learn from this activity?
• What other tools do people use to promote belonging and safety in their communities?
• What efforts can you think of in our community that seek to promote belonging and safety?

Activity 3: Final Reflection

Ask students to write their response to the following prompts on an exit ticket:

• If our school takes the issue of belonging and safety seriously, we will . . .
• If our community takes the issue of belonging and safety seriously, we will . . .
• If we do nothing, we risk . . .