Your School Has Good People. But Does It Have a Community?

In June 2024, my mother died.

My son was in pre-K. He took a month off school, missed the end of the academic year and came back to a new year in a new class. In April 2025, my father died suddenly. Three weeks off this time and then back to school. Same school. Same quiet, gutting process of returning to normal when nothing felt normal at all.

His teacher was extraordinary. An old friend from our previous school, she wrapped him in exactly the kind of care that good education looks like at its best. Adjusted expectations without lowering them. Reflection journals. Colouring books. Gentle ways for a small body to process an enormous loss. She checked in on him and on me with a warmth and consistency I will never forget.

His teacher got it right.

And almost nobody else said a word.

The Silence

Not a message. Not a card. Not a "we've been thinking of you" from the community. After my father died, we came back after almost a month away and the community around us carried on pretty much as though nothing had happened.

My son had been a member of that community from the age of seven weeks when we first arrived in country. We'd been there almost six years. He'd built relationships with adults he'd known his entire life and they all carried on as though nothing had happened.

In contrast, I remember when I was a child at an international school and missing months of school for similar reasons - and the outpouring of community was huge. I knew I belonged in that school - even though I had a lot of other issues (including behavioural ones).

I want to be generous here about my son's school, because I think generosity is the most useful frame. These were not unkind people. They were probably uncertain. Afraid of intruding. Unsure what to say. Busy. Uncomfortable with grief in the way that most adults are uncomfortable with grief - because nobody ever taught them how to sit with it.

At the end of the day though, a five year old child came back to his school community after losing his grandparents in rapid succession, and the community didn't reach out for him.

Not because they were bad people.

Because I'm not even sure the community was really there.

The Difference Between Good People and Real Community

This is a distinction that I've ruminated over and that I think school leaders most need to hear.

You can have a school full of good people (caring teachers, loving parents, well-intentioned leadership) and still not have a community. Because community isn't the sum of individual good people. It's something structural. Something that has to be built deliberately, skill fully and consistently.

Real community is what happens when the relational infrastructure is strong enough that when a family disappears for a month, someone notices. Someone says something. Someone sends a message or simply acknowledges when you return, that they see you.

Real community is what makes belonging possible. Not just in policy, but in practice. Because belonging isn't only about what the school does for a child. It's about whether the entire community that surrounds a child knows how to hold them when things get hard.

My son's school had belonging in the classroom. What it didn't have was the relational foundation that makes that felt outside those four walls. That makes a family coming back after loss feel like they belong, like they were missed, like the community noticed the shape of the hole they left.

What Schools Are Actually Building

Most international schools invest heavily in community events. International days, charity drives, parent socials, welcome evenings for new families. These are not without value. But they are not community building in an authentic, people based way. They're like when parents plan big exciting moments to connect with their child rather than doing it in those slow, dull, mundane moments. They're nice. But they don't do the heavy lifting.

Real community is built in the small, consistent, unglamorous moments of relational practice. In whether faculty know how to have honest conversations with parents. In whether parents trust each other enough to reach across when something is wrong. In whether the culture of a school (not its stated values, but its lived ones) tells every member of it that they belong, that they are seen and that when they disappear, someone will come looking.

That culture doesn't emerge from events or newsletters or mission statements. It emerges from deliberate, sustained relational work with faculty, leadership and parents. It's built when adults in a school community have developed the relational skills to show up well for each other in the hard moments just as they can in the easy.

What We Learn From Silence

My son is fine. He is resilient and loved and surrounded by people who see him clearly. But I think about what he absorbed in those months. What we all absorbed. What do we learn about our community when we return after a long absence and the community carries on as normal?

We learn that loss is private. That struggle is something you might need to carry alone. That community is something that exists in theory but can be hard to find in practice. That belonging can feel nebulous.

This wasn't an intended effect. This is what we used to call the silent curriculum when I first entered the world of education 25+ years ago. The things children and adults learn in a school through the culture of that school. It's not written anywhere. It's not intentional. It's not often malicious. It just happens.

The Question for School Leaders

I am not writing this to criticise one school. I am writing it because this story is not unique. I have heard versions of it from families in international schools all over the world - the feeling of being present in a community without being held by it. The difficulty in building community. The loneliness of parenting overseas.

The question for school leaders is not whether your school has good people. It almost certainly does.

The question is whether your school has built the relational infrastructure that turns good people into a real community. One that knows how to show up for the mundane and hard moments as well as it does the fun, exciting and engaging moments. One that holds its families and faculty and its entire wider community.

Because the schools that will nurture children who genuinely know how to belong, connect and show up for others are the ones where the adults around them are already doing it. Day in, day out.

It's entirely possible. We're living it in our current school. It takes intention, planning, honesty and the right people in the room to facilitate it so that an entire community can build the skills it needs to do this type of work around belonging.

I work with international schools to build the relational foundation that makes whole-community belonging possible. If you recognise this challenge in your school, I'd welcome a conversation.