We all depend on our relationships with others to maintain a healthy, happy life. This need for love and belonging, as outlined in the Five Basic Needs in Choice theory, is especially critical for children. Their parents and family fulfill this need at home, but at school teachers and classmates are the key sources. It is a key motivation for good behavior, and its absence is a common reason why ESL students misbehave. Belonging provides a crucial foundation for great learning and also ESL classroom management. When we understand this need and how to provide it, our lessons will much better for everyone involved.
Understanding the Need for Love and Belonging
According to Choice theory we all have a deep, natural drive to be connected with others. This might be with family, friends, partners, co-workers, pets, or groups of people. We need others to love us, understand us, and accept us for who we are. It also helps us feel safe and secure in the knowledge that we’ll be taken care of. Because young children are the most dependent age group, they especially need to feel connected to someone in almost every environment they’re in throughout the day.
At Home: At a very young age children depend mainly on their parents for this.
They then expand that circle to brothers and sisters, grandparents, and other close relatives or frequent caregivers. Children believe that they’ll be taken care of by these people.
Preschool: Once they reach preschool or kindergarten age they learn to look at their nannies or teachers for the same sense of love and belonging. This isn’t always an easy process; it’s not uncommon to see children crying when their parents leave them at a preschool on the first few days of classes. Once the bond is formed, though, it’s an important and deeply valued part of each students’ growth and development.
Primary School & Later: Students continue looking to their teachers for care, understanding and acceptance in primary school, middle school, high school and even in university. In early primary school the teacher will be by far the most important source of this need in the classroom. As the years go by peers will become more important as the teachers’ dominance decreases.
Teachers: In public primary schools the homeroom teacher and classmates are all together for many hours each week. This makes them critical sources of love and belonging.
A great teacher binds the class together into one group with shared routines, activities, and other ways of building class culture. The students then want to get along with each other and the teacher. This is a major driver of good behavior and participation in class because the children want to be accepted by and get approval from their teacher and classmates.
Classmates: As for classmates, at two years old children won’t interact much with each other. They mostly just care about their carers. In the coming years, though, the other children in their classes will become increasingly important. At six or seven years old students still mainly focus on their teacher as the most important person to them. From then on students will spend more and more energy and emotions on making and building friendships to fill their need for belonging. In later years the search for romantic love will become incredibly important to many students.
English Class: For EFL teachers, especially foreign ones, these bonds are much weaker. We may not share the same cultural background or first language so it’s harder to feel close. We’re often start out more like exotic, exciting curiosities than potential sources of care & connection.
We also generally see the children much less often than local homeroom teachers; maybe only once or twice a week. Many EFL teaches also don’t invest time in implementing & enforcing their own routines or classroom culture.
In addition, we may not be plugged into other community building activities of the school, like performances, competitions, or events that bind students together.
Finally, whereas students might have the same homeroom teacher for a full school year, they might change their EFL teacher every three to six months – or even more often. Sudden, unexpected teacher changes can be really damaging and make students less open to or trusting of future teachers. In my experiences it’s common for ESL students to misbehave more in classes with frequent teacher changes than ones with long-term teachers.
With all that said, however, your students will still naturally look to make some kind of connection with you, and they’ll expect to get something back as well.
A Lack of Love & Belonging
Sadly, there are many children around the world who don’t get enough of this basic need. This absence is a major cause of enduring, life-long pain and also misbehavior in many classes.
At Home: First, many children don’t get enough love and belonging at home. Both of their parents might work long hours. They may not have enough time or energy to give their children sufficient attention.
Instead of living near family or close friends the family might be isolated with few other people to help look after the kids. Older children might be tasked with taking care of their young siblings which they may not be ready for.
Instead of playing with friends, children these days might also grow up with too much screen-time. Without enough practice, some students may not have developed key social skills by the time they head off for school.
Parents might also have overly demanding, critical, or distant styles of raising their children. In many places it still isn’t uncommon for parents to use corporal punishment on their children.
At School: Students in many cities & countries are put in classes with 30, 40, even 50 classmates. If there’s only one teacher per class then there’s very little opportunity for sufficient attention, love, or understanding per child.
If classes also suffer from high teacher turnover, or children constantly shuffling from one school to the next, this can greatly affect the sense of community in the classroom.
How ESL Students Misbehave From a Lack of Love & Belonging
The lack of love and belonging can grow in toxic ways to leave children feeling unloved, ignored, rejected, or misunderstood. In addition, children who feel a lack of love in one area of their life might look to make up for it in another area.
When children feel their sense of love and belonging is under threat or missing they will act in the best way they know how to remedy the situation. If they have developed effective social skills this may go smoothly. If they haven’t, or their efforts fail, they’ll continue to search for something – anything – that works. This can create what teachers call misbehavior. However, if it gets students the attention, love, or closeness they need, then from their perspective there is nothing wrong with their behavior.
You might notice ESL students misbehave in these ways if they lack love and belonging.
Crying & Clinging: English teachers often see very young learners (2 & 3 years old) crying or clinging to their parents in the first few lessons. It can be really distracting for both the teacher and other students. It’s important to not get angry or frustrated with the child.
This might be one of their first separations from their parents. It might also be their first time to see a foreigner or someone who sounds completely different from anyone they’ve met before.
Teacher Attention Seeking: Many children will seek to get special attention or approval from their teacher. They might want more eye contact, smiles, one-on-one time, praise, or hugs than they’re getting. They raise and wave their hands, shout “me, me, me!”, call answers out of turn, and demand that the teacher inspects and praises their work.
If they can’t get positive attention then they might learn seek negative attention instead in the form of telling-off or other punishments. They might shout or make noise, disrupt classmates, push others, or refuse to do work. If the teacher responds with lots of one-on-one time with the student, even as a “punishment”, then they get the attention and closeness that they want.
Using L1 with Friends: Many schools and teachers encourage students to use only English in class. However, some students might still try to use their first language to continue building relationships with their friends. It may more important to them to have friends than to learn English, especially if they don’t feel competent in an activity or the class.
Playing with Toys: On a similar note, some children might sneakily bring out toys and play with friends during class. Again, their goal is to have fun and build their friendship to satisfy this need.
Playing Jokes & Using Bad Language: Around eight or nine-years old a lot of boys start to try to gain attention and acceptance by playing jokes or using foul language. They want to get a reaction from the teacher and approval from others in the the class. This is especially true if they feel the teacher doesn’t care much for them.
A Few Examples of How ESL Students Misbehave
Girl Seeks Praise: In one of my Grade 1 classes I had a girl who was desperate for praise and approval. She had to show me every coloring dictation, drawing, or handout that she completed, sometimes several times a lesson. She would call out my name multiple times. If I didn’t make eye contact with her, talk about the work, and give her a smile she would continue waving her paper at me.
Class Clown: I had a four year-old boy who would shout, make funny noises, and walk around the class to get the attention of me and everyone else. Eventually he would get pulled aside by the TA who would shout at him until he’d cry. Then she’d console him, give him a toy, and then talk or even play with him. Once he was ready, she’d bring him back to the circle. A few minutes later the behavior would start again and the cycle started over.
Related Post: How to Handle Difficult Students in ESL Classes
Third Grade Monsters: Each year in public schools there was a new crop of 3rd Grade boys who discovered forbidden words in their language or even in English.
One teacher I worked with had a boy take advantage of his struggling new teacher to gain the acceptance of his classmates. He’d say the words just loud enough for the teacher to hear, but not loud enough to be easily found. The teacher would get angry, overreact and blow up. The teacher would then get even angrier to see smirks on the faces of several students throughout the class.
How to Build Love & Belonging into EFL Classrooms
Establish primary caregivers (with TAs): Every preschool student needs a familiar person they can feel comfortable and close with. To this end, schools can divide students in each class between the available teaching assistants (TAs). Those TAs will be responsible for building a relationship with their students and even the parents.
After that, these TAs can be the first to know if there are any issues with a child. Their students will be more likely to listen and open up to them. This makes them incredibly useful resources for teachers and schools.
Puppet Pal: Another technique that works great with preschool and young primary EFL students is using a classroom puppet.
This puppet comes out regularly, even every lesson, to introduce language, read stories, and play games with the teacher and students. Very young learners are quite willing to build relationships with a puppet. Your students will bond over the puppet and look forward to seeing it come out to play.
Ice-Breakers: Children need to get to know you and each other to build a rapport. Doing ice-breakers like Mingles, Find-Someone-Who, Two Truths and One Lie, or Change Chairs are a great way to start building a classroom community.
Your students will likely be curious about you at the start of the year. You can start building rapport and relationships with the Intro Mind Map or bring in a few of your own things for show and tell.
Learn & Use Names: Using your students’ names (native or English) is another way to show you care. This is pretty easy in a class of 10 or 15, but it can be a real challenge in large public school classes.
Some teachers get around this by getting students to make name signs for their desks.
Another option is to get a seating plan with all of your students’ names. This only works though if everyone always sits in the same seat.
Sadly, this goal isn’t always possible if you’re seeing 300 or 500 students each week.
Stay Visible: Another way to build a sense of love and belonging is to consciously make eye contact, smile, and keep your face visible to the students in class. Try to avoid only looking at just a few strong students in class. Instead, make sure that you’re using a pattern that gets you to look each and every one of your students in the eyes several times per lesson.
Also, try to smile as much as you naturally can while you’re teaching. Students react happily to teachers who smile. Greet the class at the start with a smile. Use eye contact and a quick smile to silently dole out praise and encouragement. Use a smile to show you’re happy and having fun with your students – so they will, too.
Finally, avoid standing for long times where some of your students can’t see your face. Young children and low-level learners need all the context help they can get to understand English, and your face is a key part of that. If your students can’t see your face then they’ll lose track of the lesson and feel both ignored and unimportant. In my observations, ESL students often misbehave when they appear to be ignored by the teacher.
Related Post: Four Common ESL Teaching Mistakes That Undermine Lessons
Implement Connecting Routines: You can build a classroom community with things like greeting routines and hello songs.
If you’ve got a small enough class, you can greet each student in a manner of their choosing as they walk in the door. They can point to a sign for a high five, fist bump, wave, or other greeting.
Another option is to do a quick and easy warmer such as the Name Game or a Q&A ball toss.
If neither of those are possible, you can use call and respond greetings with the whole class. Younger students also enjoy singing a “Hello Song” to start the lesson.
All of these connect students in a shared expectation of what will happen or also help them to know each other.
Mix Groups: As kids get older its easy for one or two students in a class to become outsiders. Their classmates will refuse to work with them in activities.
To avoid this in EFL classes, the teacher needs to regularly switch up groups and partners. They also need to emphasize to children that they won’t be “stuck” with any partner forever – but they need to work kindly with whoever they have. In my experience, students will tolerate this as long as they trust it’s only temporary.
In really large classes without space for everyone to move, this might mean students work in pairs with the person to their left, then the person to their right, then in front and finally behind them. You will still have to move a small portion of the class, but not everyone.
Personalized Activities: Your activities can get students to know each other better and build friendships. This is especially important in new classes where students don’t know each other.
One key way is to use personalized activities where students speak about themselves and their interests. This includes activities like Change Chairs, Find Someone Who, Two Truths and One Lie, and Surveys.
Children can also build friendships with collaborative activities like small creative projects.
Be careful, however, with competitive games. Students, especially boys between 8 and 10 years old, can get overly competitive and upset about losing. You don’t want arguments or even fights to break out in your classes.
If you do choose to use competitive games with winners and losers keep them short and keep the rewards minimal. You don’t want a friendship to be broken over a game of sticky ball.
Display Work: Showing off students’ work is a great way to build a classroom community. Sadly, this option isn’t available in many teaching environments.
Teachers can post project work, writing, or drawings done by students on the classroom’s walls for everyone to see. If this isn’t possible, you can set aside a few minutes for students to share their work with classmates.
For example, groups can compare posters or pairs can take turns reading each other’s writing. While this can take the form of peer checking, it doesn’t always have to take the form of looking for mistakes. Children can also look for things they like or that were done well.
The Five Basic Needs and Misbehavior
The Need for Love and Belonging is one of the Five Basic Needs that every student and person needs to be healthy and happy. The others are Survival, Power, Freedom, and Fun. Keep these in mind as you’re planning lessons and interacting with your students. If you forget them your ESL students may misbehave.
What experiences do you have with how the need for love and belonging affected your students’ learning or behavior? Share in the comments below. Don’t forget to like, share, and follow us on Facebook!
