I’ve written before about the time I ordered a pizza to reconnect my ex-husband to the outside world. No car. No phone. No internet. A disconnection, both literal and emotional. We used Domino’s delivery notes as our 21st-century carrier pigeon. It worked, but only because someone made the effort to reach out, to bridge the gap, to make belonging possible when the system failed.
I was thinking about that moment when I read Design for Belonging by Susie Wise.
“The work of belonging is to counteract [othering]. It is to open up spaces and places so that all people regardless of their backgrounds can join in and contribute.”
I can’t stop thinking about how often we overlook the micro-moments where belonging breaks, and how many more we ignore where it could be rebuilt.
That pizza box moment was belonging by design, even if I didn’t have a name for it then. It was messy. Unconventional. A little ridiculous. But it worked.
And maybe that’s the real design challenge: how do we notice when belonging is fractured? And more importantly, what do we do next?
When Wise talks about the “design levers” of rituals, roles, spaces, systems, it isn’t just a nice framework for planners and strategists. It’s a lifeline for educators, leaders, and humans trying to hold fragmented communities together. Especially when those communities are separated by distance, devices, and distraction.
I’ve seen this in classrooms. In Zoom faculty meetings. In Twitter (“X”) threads that start with good intentions and devolve into ego matches. And I’ve felt it in the silence after someone says something unintentionally harmful, followed by… nothing.
That’s where the work is.
We talk a lot about invitation. How do we invite students into learning? Colleagues into collaboration? Families into school systems that weren’t built with them in mind?
But Wise pushes us further. She explains that invitation isn’t just about showing up. It’s about showing up in a space that sees you. Hears you. Values your perspective.
That only happens with intention.
I think about how many times I’ve created systems that worked “in theory” but didn’t feel like belonging in practice. The school-wide email that no one read. The virtual office hours that no one joined. The peer feedback protocol that favored the loudest voices. None of those were belonging, even if they were well-designed.
Because belonging isn’t the form. It’s the feeling.
Wise also talks about dissent and repair—two words we don’t sit with enough in schools.
We love our norms and expectations and “we’re all in this together” mantras. But what happens when someone pushes back? When they say, “This space doesn’t feel safe for me,” or “That comment hurt”?
Too often, we go straight to defense. Or worse—silence.
But real belonging means we stay. We sit in the discomfort. We acknowledge the impact even if it wasn’t our intent. We ask what repair could look like—and then we act.
Sometimes that action is a redesign.
Sometimes it’s an apology.
Sometimes it’s a damn pizza box with a handwritten message to reboot the phone so messages arrive. haha
I don’t have a neat ending here. Belonging is squiggly like that. It’s a process, not a product. But what I’m learning from Susie Wise, and remembering from my own messy, human moments, is this:
We can design for belonging in every space we touch.
Even the ones that feel too big, too broken, too remote.
Even the ones held together by pizza and Post-it notes.
Especially those.
Laura K Spencer, Ed.D. 