(Part of the Boston College Blog series)
Schools are crowded places. Corridors fill with noise, staffrooms hum with conversation, and leaders move constantly between meetings, classrooms, parents and staff.
Yet crowded places can still be lonely places.
Loneliness is not simply being alone. It is the sense that the connection we long for is not the connection we are experiencing. A principal may attend six meetings in a day without having one conversation in which they can speak honestly. A teacher may work beside the same people for years and still feel unseen. A student may have hundreds of online connections but no relationship in which they feel safe, valued and known.
We can be surrounded by people and still feel that we are carrying life alone.
This matters because loneliness is linked with poorer physical and psychological health. These findings do not mean that loneliness inevitably causes illness, but they remind us that connection is not a luxury. It is part of what helps human beings live well.
This is where belonging becomes central to flourishing.
For me, flourishing is not simply about feeling happy or performing well. It is about living and working with purpose, connection, dignity, agency and a sense of wholeness. Belonging gives people the relationships and security they need to grow, contribute and live well.
To belong is more than being included on a staff list, invited to a meeting or welcomed into a room. It is to know that your presence matters, your contribution has value, and your humanity does not depend entirely on what you produce.
When people experience belonging, they are more likely to contribute, ask for help and invest themselves in a shared purpose. When belonging is weak, they may become guarded, conceal uncertainty and continue performing while becoming increasingly detached from the community around them.
Loneliness and belonging are related, but they are not identical. Loneliness is the experience of insufficient connection. Belonging is the experience of being accepted, heard and significant within a community. Loneliness can also become self-reinforcing: people who feel disconnected may expect rejection or withdraw from others, and the behaviours they adopt to avoid further hurt can deepen their isolation.³
As school leaders, we cannot prevent every experience of loneliness. We can, however, shape cultures that make disconnection less likely and belonging more possible.
The study underpinning this article examined changes in 69 physical, behavioural, psychological and social factors and their relationship with loneliness four years later. It involved a large, nationally representative sample of adults aged over 50 in the United States. Stronger purpose, better psychological wellbeing and more meaningful social connections were among the factors associated with lower levels of loneliness four years later.
The research was not conducted in schools, and its findings should not be transferred uncritically to teachers, leaders or students. Nevertheless, it offers an important insight: loneliness is shaped by health, purpose, relationships and the wider conditions of people’s lives. There is no single cause and no single solution.
This should make us cautious about responding to disconnection through isolated activities alone. A morning tea, a wellbeing week or a social event may bring people together, but none can compensate for a culture in which people regularly feel unheard, unsupported or valued only for what they can do.
A school may have an active social calendar and still have a lonely culture.
The leadership question is not simply, How often do our people come together?
It is, What do they experience when they do?
One of the study’s useful findings is that subjective assessments of health, purpose and social support were more consistently associated with later loneliness than several objective indicators. We cannot assume that because connection appears to exist, belonging is being experienced.
The staff member who attends every meeting may still feel excluded from the decisions that matter. The principal who belongs to several professional networks may still have no one with whom they can speak honestly. The student who appears socially confident may still feel that no one truly knows them.
Belonging is found in the quality of our relationships. Do people feel heard? Can they disagree without being pushed to the edge? Does asking for help lead to support or judgement?
Belonging begins when people believe they can be known without being diminished.
This requires relationships in which people can speak honestly, ask for help and remain respected. Flourishing communities do not remove accountability or avoid difficult conversations. They combine high expectations with dignity, honesty and care.
Among the protective factors, purpose deserves particular attention in education. Many people enter the profession because they want to make a difference. Purpose can sustain us by connecting daily work with something larger than ourselves. When people carry a shared purpose together, it can deepen belonging; when they carry it alone, it can deepen isolation.
The problem is not commitment. It is when commitment is used to excuse conditions that are no longer sustainable. Good leadership protects both the purpose of the work and the people carrying it.
The research did not identify one dominant protective factor. This suggests that schools need a combination of relational, organisational and individual responses. Belonging must be woven into the culture rather than left to a wellbeing committee. It is built through mentoring, trusted peer relationships, thoughtful induction, participatory meetings, manageable workloads and leaders who notice when someone begins to withdraw.
Timetables, meetings, conversations and the allocation of responsibility all send messages about who is noticed and who belongs.
Sometimes the most important starting point is not another programme. It is one dependable relationship within a wider culture of connection.
A flourishing school is one in which people are more likely to experience dignity, connection, purpose, agency and belonging.
What would it take for every person in our school to know that they do not have to carry life alone?
This is part of a series written while on the Boston College Fellowship.
This was inspired by the article by Hong, Joanna H., Julia S. Nakamura, Sakshi S. Sahakari, William J. Chopik, Koichiro Shiba, Tyler J. VanderWeele, and Eric S. Kim. “The silent epidemic of loneliness: identifying the antecedents of loneliness using a lagged exposure-wide approach.” Psychological Medicine 54, no. 8 (2024): 1519-1532.