Centering Community

By: Adrian Takyi, Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

Live Oak School supports the potential and promise of each student. 

 

So begins our mission statement, serving as the north star for our work. This bold opening, and the Vision and Values statements that follow it, commit us to our students, their families, and to each other. We are on this journey, together, with our students at the center.

 

This togetherness requires a sense of belonging for each student—we cannot bring some along, while leaving others behind. In the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB), we believe this to be true, and we stay tied to our school’s foundational values so that everyone can seize the opportunity to fulfill their potential and promise.

 

Belonging is not a new concept. More than 100 years ago, pioneering German psychiatrist Alfred Adler coined the term Gemeinschaftsgefühl, which translates to “community feeling,” and wrote about his belief that true psychological health comes from a sense of belonging and responsibility to others. Psychologist Abraham Maslow later described a hierarchy of needs, outlining prerequisites for reaching toward one’s potential. Once one’s basic physiological and safety needs are met, love and belonging make possible a sense of comfort and an ability to learn. 

 

Conversely, we’re aware of the impact when belonging is not prioritized. We’re currently witnessing a loneliness epidemic, and the despair that affects those who lack a sense of community feeling. UCLA medical researcher Steve Cole characterized loneliness as “one of the most toxic environmental risk factors we’re aware of in terms of all-cause mortality,” comparing its destructiveness to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. A strong sense of belonging is deeply supportive of mind, body, and spirit. At Live Oak, we strive daily to protect our students from feeling alone. Our greatest hope is that their experience at Live Oak will serve as a template throughout their lives: this is how it feels to belong. 

 

Numerous studies confirm all this, highlighting links between belonging, wellness, and academic success. Belonging is a need, not a nice-to-have, for a thriving educational community. For students to feel welcome and connected, safe to take risks and embrace challenges, and to fully pursue their intellectual potential, we must intentionally allocate time towards our pursuit of belonging.

 

Belonging is not a static state; we can’t check it off our annual to-do list so we can get to the rest of the work at hand. Belonging needs tending. If neglected, it can wither – especially with young people. As author Geoffrey Cohen states in his book, “Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides,” belonging is more like “a perspective that’s continually being re-created anew in every situation.” Students may flow through settings where they are wholeheartedly comfortable and confident, only to run up against an encounter moment that shakes their sense of belonging to its core. True belonging work in a school takes steady attention and focus to ensure that it is deeply rooted.

 

We pursue this impact in numerous ways through the Office of DEIB, beginning with welcoming and connecting with students. This includes new student check-ins to hear the experiences and supports needed to successfully and fully enter our community, our relationship mapping survey which helps us to better understand how students are connecting with our adult community, and through student clubs, affinity spaces, and alliance groups that allow our young people a variety of opportunities to find connection within our diverse community. This past year, we engaged with the NAIS Assessment of Multiculturalism and Inclusivity (AIM survey) to gather qualitative and qualitative data on the school climate and culture that our students are experiencing. These AIM survey results are intended to aid our office in celebrating our strengths, addressing our challenge areas, and mapping a strategic, data-informed path forward.

 

I’ve been told that at San Francisco’s long-closed Playland-at-the-Beach there was a giant wooden wheel that spun like an old school record. Dozens of kids would lie down on the wheel as it began to spin. Only those in the center of the wheel could resist its centrifugal force and stay on – all the other kids would gradually slide off to the perimeter. Institutional values are like that wheel – anything that is not held in the center is at risk of sliding off to the side.

 

At Live Oak, we strive to continually place our students—and their sense of belonging—at the center, balanced against unfavorable forces, and prepared to take on whatever challenges lie ahead.


Read the full Summer 2026 issue of Live Oak Magazine.