Fine.
It’s such a small word.
As a parent, when my son tells me he’s fine, I make sure he really means fine. I try to hold space for him to talk about everything or absolutely nothing. We have focused conversations about both of our mental headspace’s, and sometimes I catch something hiding just below the surface.
As a teacher, when a student tells me they’re fine, I try to look them in the eyes. I ask twice. I remind them that if they’re ever not fine, my door is open.
And as a former student, I know that fine is relative to the person using the word.
It can mean a lot.
It can mean nothing at all.
Sometimes fine means, I’m actually fine.
Sometimes it means, Please don’t ask me about this here.
Sometimes it means, I don’t know how to explain what’s happening.
And sometimes fine could be the border between I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll never see you again.
So when a student says they’re fine, maybe the question isn’t whether we heard them.
Maybe the question is:
Do we know this child well enough to know what “fine” means today?
We Know a Lot About Students. But Do We Know Them?
Schools collect an incredible amount of information about children.
Grades. Attendance. Test scores. Behavior reports. IEP goals. ACCESS scores. Intervention notes. Nurse visits. Assignments. Accommodations.
We can know a whole lot about a student without actually knowing the student.
I’ve taught students who were technically doing everything they were supposed to do, but something didn’t feel right.
Those are the students I tend to give a little extra attention.
Sometimes I’ll pull them aside and check in privately. I’ve had students burst into tears and unload everything right there. I’ve had students tell me something is happening at home or in another class, but they aren’t ready to talk about it yet. And I’ve had students look at me completely lost for words, like they need help, a shoulder, an ear, something, but they’re afraid to say it or don’t know where to start.
Before disengagement becomes failing grades or chronic absenteeism, it doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it’s sleeping in class.
Suddenly talking constantly.
Constantly reaching for a device.
Sloppy work from a student whose work isn’t usually sloppy.
Missing assignments.
An attitude that wasn’t there before.
Extreme sadness.
Or maybe they just seem…different.
Kids are complicated. The signs vary.
But I think we make a mistake when we wait for the signs to become big enough to fit neatly inside one of our systems before we get curious.
Maybe “Doing Fine” Isn’t the Standard
The new 2026 Voices of Gen Z Study gave me another reason to sit with this.
About one in three students surveyed said they don’t feel like they belong at school or feel comfortable asking questions in class. Thirty percent said they don’t have an adult at school who recognizes their talents and interests. Nearly half said school doesn’t give them opportunities to do what they do best every day.
And here’s the part that really matters to me: students with the strongest experiences of engagement, support and belonging were far more likely to say they felt prepared for their futures than those with the weakest experiences—81% compared with 27%.
I’m not surprised.
Especially once students reach high school.
Schools get bigger. The hallways get more crowded. Everybody is focused on growing up, and sometimes I don’t think we leave enough space for growing together.
I also think adults sometimes don’t take students seriously enough when they tell us they don’t feel connected. We assume this generation is just saying things to say them or that they don’t understand their own feelings.
Maybe they do.
And I think schools sometimes confuse compliance with engagement.
Just because a student does what they have to do to get through the day doesn’t mean they’re connected to the place they’re doing it.
A “good student” can be disengaged.
An academically successful student can feel like they don’t belong.
Class participation is not crowd participation.
My Son Has Made Me Think About This Differently
As a parent, I know my son doesn’t always give people the opportunity to really get to know him.
He’s friendly, but extremely introverted. He’s not necessarily the kid who stands out in the hallway. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if he gets some of the attention he gets simply because I’m his mother and I’ve also worked in his school.
I don’t see kids knocking down my door trying to get him to school events.
And this is a different time. I don’t think making friends feels the way it did when I was growing up. Cliques are real. Social lives are different.
My son’s approach is basically:
Be kind to anybody who is kind to me. Make it through the day. Come home, talk to my real friends and play my games.
And you know what?
Maybe that’s okay.
Maybe every child doesn’t need school to become the center of their social universe.
An introverted student shouldn’t have to become an extrovert to prove they belong.
So I’ve started thinking the better standard may not be:
Does this student participate in the school community?
Maybe it’s:
Does this student know that if they need this community, someone in it will notice and show up?
Because there is a huge difference between a teacher knowing facts about a child and actually knowing that child.
Facts can be read on paper. They can be passed down from administrators and previous teachers.
Knowing a student is the gateway to becoming a real mentor and guide.
It’s knowing the difference between the day they’re upset because they missed the bus and the day they’re standing on the edge.
But There Are Adults Everywhere
That’s what makes this so strange.
Schools aren’t empty buildings where children have been left alone.
There are teachers.
Counselors.
Administrators.
Paraprofessionals.
Coaches.
Nurses.
Security staff.
Specialists.
So how can a child be surrounded by adults all day and still feel unseen?
I think one answer is trust.
For me, becoming that person for a student starts with creating a safe space, listening without immediately judging, showing up consistently and reminding the student through your actions that your presence isn’t temporary.
I’ve had students who didn’t know or trust me when we met.
Some gave me a hard time.
Some hid everything they were feeling.
Those are usually the students I pay even closer attention to.
I let them come into my space to vent, cry, sit in silence or just exist for a minute. When I see them in the hallway, I make sure I speak. I might compliment them. I remind them that I see them.
And when all else fails, my students know they can come get a hug from me.
I don’t think schools can assign that kind of relationship.
Gaining a child’s trust is like winning the lottery.
It doesn’t happen every day. But when you hit that number, the reward is something all its own.
Most teachers probably have their own subset of children who find them and rely on them for emotional or mental support.
But here’s what bothers me:
What happens to the child who never finds that person?
The CDC defines school connectedness as students feeling that adults and peers at school care about them as individuals and about their learning. Students who feel connected are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, attend school, and graduate, and are less likely to experience several health and behavioral risks.
So this isn’t fluff.
Relationships aren’t something we squeeze in after the “real” educational work is finished.
They are part of the work.
What If the Behavior Is Telling Us Something?
How often do we ask:
What’s wrong with this kid?
Instead of:
What changed?
It happens every day.
Sometimes, in our frustration, we assume the problem is the child instead of the child’s circumstances.
I’ve watched students’ entire attitudes change once they trusted a teacher enough to let that teacher in.
Sometimes that relationship can be the difference between a student failing a class and a student barely getting by.
And barely getting by may not sound like success to everybody.
But sometimes you have to know where the student started to understand what success looks like.
A snappy answer can look like defiance.
Talking back can look like defiance.
Putting your head down and staring straight ahead can look like disengagement.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes a student is waiting for somebody to ask.
Sometimes they’re hoping they’ll catch you alone.
Sometimes they don’t even know what they need.
That’s why I think a noticeable change in behavior should trigger curiosity immediately, not after we’ve collected enough incidents to decide there’s officially a problem.
Accountability still matters. I’m not suggesting we throw expectations out the window because a student is struggling.
But accountability should apply to adults too.
If a student chooses a safe person, why should the title on that person’s office door determine whether that relationship “counts”?
And when something changes significantly, why are departments working from piecemeal information that never gets passed down?
Maybe everybody doesn’t need to know everything.
They shouldn’t.
But the people responsible for helping the child need enough appropriate information to stop working against one another.
What Are They Good At?
Here’s another thing I think schools get backward.
We are incredibly good at documenting deficits.
What a student missed.
What they failed.
Where they’re behind.
Which standard they haven’t mastered.
How many days they’ve missed.
How many assignments are incomplete.
Which behavior needs correcting.
But where do we record that this child can draw like crazy?
That she writes music?
That he fixes computers?
That she takes care of younger siblings every afternoon?
That he speaks three languages?
That she wants to own a business?
That he can make an entire room laugh?
Students are real people with real stories behind them.
I think it’s important to know where someone comes from if we’re going to understand why they are who they are.
I’ve watched students’ entire demeanor change when we start talking about something they’re good at.
Students thrive when they feel some sense of control. And if I know what my students enjoy or what they’re good at, I can sometimes build an assignment around those interests.
But when a child repeatedly hears what they’re bad at, eventually that description can start becoming part of how they see themselves.
If you hear something enough times, you can start believing it.
And once you believe something about yourself in your heart and your mind, you may begin becoming that thing intentionally or unintentionally.
So yes, interests matter.
Talents matter.
Goals matter.
Culture matters.
Identity matters.
Those aren’t just cute things to put on a beginning-of-the-year worksheet and forget about by October.
They’re educational information if we’re serious about educating the whole student.
Parents May Know a Completely Different Child
A teacher says:
He doesn’t participate.
And the parent is sitting there thinking:
You should see him at home.
Both things can be true.
Children are often most comfortable in their home space, so parents may see the freest version of that child.
Sometimes the child at home looks nothing like the child at school.
That’s information.
But how often do we call parents simply to ask:
Who is this child outside of this building?
What are they interested in?
What motivates them?
What do you do when they get stuck?
What are they really into right now?
How do you bring them back when they’re frustrated?
Are they likely to advocate for themselves when they need help?
Usually when a parent gets called into school, something has already happened.
Now it’s not a getting-to-know-your-child meeting.
It’s a disciplinary meeting.
Everybody comes in already standing in their opposing corners, preparing to strategize.
As a parent, there are things I would want my son’s teachers to know that aren’t sitting in their SIS.
He’s introverted.
He’s extremely sensitive.
He’s extremely smart, but sometimes he needs to be pushed because he sees being smart as something that makes him stand out negatively rather than something special about himself.
Those things matter if you’re trying to teach him rather than simply teach the class he’s sitting in.
And with multilingual and culturally different families, there may be entire pieces of a child’s story that the school never sees.
Some of our students have lived lives many adults in their school couldn’t imagine.
They may need patience and love without necessarily knowing what either one looks like in this environment—or how to ask for it.
Opening the Door Isn’t the Same as Belonging
This is where I think we have to talk about history.
Because inclusion is a very big word, and in this country we have struggled for a very long time to get it right.
In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education rejected legally segregated public schools as inherently unequal.
In 1974, Lau v. Nichols addressed another kind of access. The Supreme Court found that San Francisco’s failure to provide adequate language support denied Chinese-speaking students a meaningful opportunity to participate in public education.
Then disability rights pushed another door open. In 1975, Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the law that would eventually become IDEA. Before that law, the Department of Education says many children with disabilities were denied educational access altogether; in 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities.
Those changes mattered.
They still matter.
But access and belonging are not the same thing.
Opening a door and letting someone in is not the same as knowing who they are, making them feel like they belong and creating a safe space for them once they’re inside.
When I think back on my own education, I don’t remember seeing myself reflected in much of what I learned.
I remember an overlay of whitewashing, white labeling and avoidance when it came to finding my own reflection in education.
So when we talk about belonging, race matters.
Language matters.
Disability matters.
Immigration matters.
Class matters.
Neurodiversity matters.
Culture matters.
Not because every Black child, multilingual child, disabled child, immigrant child, poor child or neurodivergent child has the same experience.
They don’t.
But because we cannot design a system “for our children” while pretending those things don’t affect how children experience the system.
And I don’t think we’ve simply confused allowing children into the system with redesigning the system so they belong.
I think we continually rely on a system that is already built and broken because we’re too scared to blow a hole through what’s left standing and rebuild it for the needs of this new world.
We keep renovating.
Adding another program.
Another department.
Another intervention.
Another requirement.
Another platform.
Another survey.
Maybe at some point we have to stop being so afraid of the demolition.
So What Would We Build Instead?
First, I think every student should have at least one trusted adult.
But I don’t think the school should automatically choose that person.
The student should.
Maybe it’s the counselor.
Maybe it’s an ESL teacher.
Maybe it’s the basketball coach.
Maybe it’s a para.
Maybe it’s the secretary who greets them every morning.
Maybe it’s the security officer everybody else walks past.
If that’s the adult the child trusts, why would we fight that because their job title doesn’t match the box we’ve created?
I also think we should ask students periodically whether they feel known, safe and connected.
And if the answer is no, we can’t put the result into another spreadsheet and congratulate ourselves for collecting student voice.
Somebody has to follow up.
Why don’t you feel connected?
Is there anybody here you trust?
What would make this space feel safer?
What do you need?
And then we need to be prepared to actually do something with the answer.
A quick classroom check-in might take a few minutes away from a lesson.
But on the right day, for the right child, those few minutes may matter a hell of a lot more than whatever was written on the whiteboard.
Teachers can’t carry all of this alone, though.
A teacher can notice.
A teacher can build relationships.
A teacher can check in.
A teacher can communicate when something changes.
But there needs to be a schoolwide system behind that teacher.
Because knowing the whole child should not require one extraordinary teacher to become the child’s teacher, counselor, social worker, family liaison, case manager and emergency response system.
Yes, I Think Technology Has a Place Here
But only after we figure out the human process.
I don’t want another system that gives teachers 17 more things to document.
I want us to look at the partially working systems we already have, condense what makes sense, rebuild what doesn’t, and create something powerful enough to speak about the whole child—not just the part of the child the person before them happened to get to know.
Imagine a teacher being able to appropriately see, at a glance:
This student’s interests.
Strengths.
Goals.
Clubs.
Preferred communication style.
Chosen trusted adult.
Relevant accommodations.
Patterns in attendance or missing assignments.
Changes that might deserve a human check-in.
Not everybody should see everything.
Privacy always matters.
Students should have a voice in who knows their personal business, and a student’s chosen safe person may appropriately need context that every adult in the building does not.
Technology could help us notice patterns.
It could organize information.
It could help the right people communicate.
It could tell us:
Something changed. Maybe somebody should check on this kid.
But technology should never decide whether a child belongs.
It shouldn’t decide whether they’re happy.
Whether they’re safe.
Who they trust.
What a behavior “means.”
Whether they’re a problem.
Or whether they’re worth our concern.
A dashboard can tell us something changed.
Then a human needs to go find the kid.
Maybe Parents Need to Ask a Different Question
We ask:
How is my child doing?
And schools answer with grades.
Attendance.
Behavior.
Test scores.
Maybe we need to ask something else too:
Does my child feel known here?
And maybe that’s not even enough.
I’ve been thinking about what I would ask my own son.
I don’t think I’d ask, “Do you feel like you belong at school?”
I already know the answer I might get.
I’m fine.
Instead, I think I’d ask:
“If something happened at school that you didn’t want to tell me about yet, is there an adult there you would trust enough to go to?”
And then:
“Who?”
Because if he can name somebody, that tells me something.
And if he can’t, that tells me something too.
The CDC’s work on school connectedness gives us plenty of reasons to take that answer seriously. Feeling cared for, valued, supported and connected at school is associated with better academic, health and well-being outcomes.
But I also don’t think engagement looks the same for every child.
Some students are thinking:
I want to do well. I’m going to do my best while I’m here, get through the day, and then get back to my life.
Others are thinking:
I showed up. That has to be good enough. Nobody really cares whether I’m here anyway, so why should I?
Those are two very different children who might look exactly the same sitting quietly in a classroom.
That’s why knowing matters.
A child shouldn’t have to fall apart before we become interested in who they are.
They shouldn’t have to fail before we ask what changed.
They shouldn’t have to disappear before somebody notices they were slowly checking out.
And they shouldn’t have to become a problem before they become a person.
So maybe the next time a student tells us they’re fine, we shouldn’t immediately decide they’re not.
Maybe we should just know them well enough to recognize when we need to ask twice.
Does anybody at your child’s school actually know them?
And if the answer is no, maybe the next question isn’t what’s wrong with the child.
Maybe it’s what we’re willing to change about the school.