When you open the school gate to Alisha, the very first thing she does is to run over to her best friend, Laura, and give her a hug. It seems cruel to tell her to stop, but of course you have to. The girls may be in the same class bubble, but hugging is officially against the school’s new social distancing policy.

As more children arrive, it turns out that Alisha and Laura are not the only ones who need reminding about it. Everyone, it seems, is keen to reconnect. Out of everything that students have missed during lockdown, the sense of community that schools provide has been at the top of the list for many.

And this makes biological sense.

“Research suggests that, as human beings, we have almost a fundamental need to belong to something,” explains Lynsey Mahmood, lecturer in organisational psychology at City, University of London. “We also get a lot of feedback and validation from being part of a community.”

Carl Walker, a community psychologist at the University of Brighton, agrees with this. “Community is important because it gives people a huge sense of their identity. It’s important in how you understand who you are in a very fundamental sense,” he says.

For young people, this understanding is shaped through being part of the school community. However, lockdown has tested the sense of togetherness schools provide.

While some schools may have drawn closer through Zoom discos and doorstep lunch drops, Walker notes that people’s experiences of lockdown have been incredibly variable.

“Some have said they’ve had a feeling of ‘all being in it together’, but others have felt completely isolated,” he explains. This disparity of experience will be just one of the challenges facing schools when they reunite.

So, what can schools do to help their communities heal? We asked psychologists and school leaders to share their ideas on how to rebuild community bonds as schools reopen fully. They came up with 13 ideas.

1. Talk it over

When pupils return, giving them space to talk about the experience of lockdown will be crucial, says Walker. “Schools are going to have to do work that allows kids to process some of the things that have happened,” he explains. “Some kids may feel a bit lost and when they look around, they’ll think others are doing really well. But actually, when they all start sharing experiences, they get the sense they’re not the only one wrestling with things, which will help.”

Neil Butler, executive principal at XP Trust in Doncaster, agrees with this. His team have already been considering how they can structure such discussions with pupils.

“One of the things I’ve been talking about with headteachers is doing a piece of work on how we survived lockdown or what lockdown taught us about ourselves,” he says.

Butler anticipates that there may be issues with attendance in the first weeks back, and that those with key worker parents may have additional worries.

“How do we overcome that anxiety? All of this is done by talking. It’s certainly not done by doing more maths and English,” he says.

2. Voice your values

Revisiting the values that hold your school community together could also be useful, and could tie into the discussions about lockdown experiences, suggests Mahmood.

“Creating a set of shared values as a class could be a really valuable exercise post-lockdown. It could help to remind the children that they’ve got this collective identity.

“Particularly for younger children, some of the classroom values could be as simple as ‘be kind’. This might give teachers a way into noting that everyone will have experienced lockdown differently, so it’s important to be nice to each other,” Mahmood points out.

These shared values could be displayed on the wall in class to serve as a reminder that everyone is in it together, she adds.

3. Build a jigsaw

Most pupils will have become accustomed to solo study during lockdown, but collaboration can build camaraderie. So, how do you rekindle it? Walker says that 1970s social psychology offers just the tactic.

“Psychologist Elliot Aronson created jigsaw exercises when he was looking at how to improve racial integration in schools in the US,” Walker explains. “You take a group of pupils and give them one piece of a ‘puzzle’ - it can be one piece of a story, or a task - so they have to come together to complete it.”

This strategy has been used in all sorts of situations since, he points out, including with children in schools.

“Doing these exercises builds a sense of community and common identity. You cannot build the jigsaw unless everyone contributes their bit. So, everyone is understood to have real value and importance,” says Walker.

This is an activity that could work just as well to rebuild connections between staff, he adds. Head to jigsaw.org for more ideas on putting it into action.

4. Banish ‘but’

Praise also has an important role in making everyone feel valued, according to Chris Wain, outgoing headteacher of Pallister Park Primary School in Middlesbrough. She believes praise is at the heart of positive community building - and that unqualified praise can be particularly powerful.

“I always say to my staff, ‘There doesn’t always have to be a ‘but’,” Wain says. “When you go into someone’s classroom, you can say, ‘That’s amazing’. You don’t have to say, ‘But what you could have done …’”

Wain’s school plans to get its weekly “praise assemblies” back up and running as soon as possible once pupils are all back. These are opportunities to celebrate sporting achievements, good work and to award on-the-spot prizes, Wain explains.

“The caretaker might have seen somebody being really helpful. Everybody brings something,” she says.

The assemblies are on Fridays, so the school ends the week on a good note.

5. Cultivate crew culture

Meanwhile, Butler’s trust has another method for bringing pupils together: something he calls “crew”. A crew consists of 12-13 pupils, led by one adult.

“For 45 minutes a day, we spend time with our crew talking about how we work well together, how we critique each other, issues of the day and how they affect our lives, our academic grades. We help each other to be the best version of ourselves,” Butler says.

Although modelled on the traditional tutor group set-up, there is an important difference here. “The teacher sits within the circle, which changes the dynamic of a traditional form tutor role. We purposefully call it ‘crew’ because everyone is an active participant,” including the teacher, Butler explains.

6. Play the name game

A sense of community can be actively cultivated within lessons, too, argues Doug Lemov, managing director at Uncommon Schools, a US non-profit organisation that manages public schools, with an emphasis on community.

“To me, the biggest driver of community is effective teaching that connects with students. A great way to start a class is to talk about kids’ homework: ‘Denarius, I love what you wrote’; ‘Jess, you did well to really observe that mysterious character’. I’m letting you know that I read your work and I valued it. A big part of how we build our community is these constant feedback loops that make pupils feel heard,” Lemov says.

Naming pupils as you deliver this feedback is an important part of the process, as doing this says “I see you”.

And while it can feel natural to try to connect with pupils on a more personal level in times of crisis, the power of the traditional teacher-student dynamic should not be underestimated, Lemov adds.

“It would be easier to skip over the intentionality about teaching pupils right now in an effort to just connect with them in any way, like, ‘What movie did you see over the weekend?’ But that’s very different from showing you’re helping them accomplish their long-term goals. The teaching is ultimately where the most foundational relationships are built - and community is relationships,” says Lemov.

7. Sharing is caring

Thinking about professional relationships between adults is also important, says Butler. His trust has been maintaining community ties during lockdown by creating “This week in the trust” videos, to keep stakeholders up to speed with the work schools have been doing. This project has had an unexpected benefit: teachers have loved seeing what their counterparts in the trust are working on.

“I’ve had one member of staff say, ‘When we get back to normal, I’d really like to work with the other school on their Year 2 work - it looks really interesting’. It’s really cemented the whole trust staff,” Butler says.

8. Be visible

Another important factor, especially when it comes to the role of the school leader, is visibility. You can’t expect to build a community with pupils if they can’t see you, argues Wain.

“I’ve always sat in the main office, because that’s the heart of the school, and the door is open so you’re visible. At breaktimes, my staff are visible, too - they don’t all disappear into the staffroom,” she says.

9. Rock a routine

Making sure that students know who will be where and when is important, suggests Denarius Frazier, principal of Uncommon Collegiate Charter High School in New York. The pandemic will have shaken most pupils’ sense of normality, so that’s why he plans to emphasise systems and routines in the autumn term.

“Kids thrive off predictability,” Frazier says. “We build predictability through our crystal-clear directions about what kids will have to do. Every single class in school follows a similar structure so they know what to expect.”

10. Embrace honesty

While routine can be comforting, people also need to feel that they have some influence over shaping their school community. This can be as simple as making people feel heard.

For example, at Wain’s school, they have recently introduced “hot chocolate Wednesdays”, whereby a child is sent to have a hot chocolate with Wain and her co-head every week. “If you have a school council, you hear the voices of certain children over and over again, whereas through this all children come and chat to us and we get a chance to hear them,” she says.

Wain has also created an environment where staff and pupils feel able to speak up.

“If you have a staff meeting and one of your least experienced teachers says, ‘I don’t think that will work, Chris’, I’m flattered they have the confidence in me to say that publicly. I would hate to have a staff that blindly does what I ask. It’s about making everyone feel they can contribute,” she says.

11. Get space-smart

Culture is important, but the physical school environment also has a role to play in building a positive community.

“Nobody wants to work in a classroom that’s got paint falling off the walls. Pupils and staff deserve good facilities,” says Wain.

Maintaining the school buildings is key to making people feel valued, then. Of course, Wain recognises that budgets vary wildly across schools, but she warns against the trap of false economy: “We don’t cut corners. Because of that, we don’t have to do emergency repairs.”

Having a consistent identity across the classrooms in each key stage can also be helpful, she says.

“I like all the classrooms in a key stage to have matching furniture and similar facilities, so when pupils move classes, the only thing that will change for them is the person leading the class. Because some of our children lack security in the rest of their lives, that gives that sense of security and belonging,” she explains.

The same effect could perhaps be achieved by creating wall displays that are echoed throughout classrooms in the school.

12. Go for goals

According to Mahmood, consistency is equally important when it comes to goals. Schools that can demonstrate that everyone is working towards a common cause are likely to have an easier time strengthening their sense of community.

“Groups that tend to fare better are those that have a shared goal or purpose - something that everyone is working towards,” Mahmood says.

“For schools post-lockdown, this might be as simple as getting back into a routine or catching up on work that’s been missed, but it’s important that it includes what the children hope to achieve and how they’re going to be able to contribute to it. So it’s not just driven by the school saying, ‘Right, we need to catch up on this and this.’ It’s working with the children to develop a plan.”

This works best on a class level, she believes, so the goals can fit the needs of that class - and all voices can be heard.

13. Think big

Ultimately, though, rebuilding community bonds cannot be confined to the school itself.

“If you want to really effectively support children, you have to support the broader community because children will leave your school and go back into it - into their houses with their families,” says Walker.

For example, he notes that his school is doing work around emotional literacy and is reaching out to parents and caregivers, too, so pupils don’t get mixed messages about how to understand their emotions.

Butler agrees that schools need to take a big-picture view on this.

“We put ourselves into the community, rather than hide behind the gates. In one of our schools, for example, the local food bank was running low. I was headteacher and I threw it out to the kids - what shall we do? Now five children from that school work at the food bank every week,” he says.

Connecting with the wider community may help children to feel proud of it and understand their place in it. This is powerful at any time, Butler points out, but perhaps especially now.

Jessica Powell is a freelance journalist

This article originally appeared in the 31 July 2020 issue under the headline “13 ways to rebuild community”