Unmuted: Reimagining Belonging for Global Students and Schools
How Students, Parents and Schools can Build True Belonging Across Borders
Picture this: You’re standing in the middle of a buzzing school corridor. Lockers slam, laughter bounces off the walls, someone is shouting in a language you don’t understand. You’re 11. You’re new. You’re different. And all you want is a place to sit where you don’t feel like a question mark.
Welcome to life as a minority in an international school.
These schools are often painted as global utopias—where culture is celebrated, accents blend like music, and everyone feels like they belong. But if you look a little closer, the experience for many students, especially those who check more than one “different” box—be it race, religion, gender identity, socio-economic status, language, or disability—can feel less like a melting pot and more like a maze.
The challenge isn’t just about “fitting in.” It’s about finding your voice—and knowing that it’s safe, valuable, and necessary to use it.
The Student Experience: When your Identity Feels Like a Spotlight
Let’s get real for a moment.
What does it actually feel like to be a minority in an international school?
Maybe it’s your first day, and you walk into the cafeteria with a headscarf, or a shawarma wrap from home, or a name no one’s heard before—and suddenly, you’re not just the new kid. You’re the different kid. A curiosity. A question mark.
You sit in class and brace yourself for the roll call—not again. They butcher your name. Again. You think about correcting them, but your voice freezes somewhere in your chest. The polite laughter around you lands like a slap.
Or maybe it’s not even what’s said. It’s the things no one talks about:
• The way group projects never seem to include you.
• The way the teacher compliments your “excellent English,” even though it’s your first language.
• The way your culture, your faith, your pronouns, your learning needs—don’t show up anywhere in the curriculum, or in the policies, or even in the posters.
• The way the coach hesitates when you try out for the team, eyes flicking to your wheelchair: “We’ve never had someone like you on the team,” they say with a smile that doesn’t quite feel like an invitation.
And over time, you get quiet. Not because you don’t have anything to say— but because you’re not sure it’s safe to say it.
When I work with students in these moments—multilingual kids trying to keep up with the pace of idiomatic jokes, neurodivergent students absorbing a thousand unspoken rules, or kids of colour questioning why they’re always asked where they’re “really from”—the theme is always the same:
“I didn’t know I was allowed to take up space.”
Let’s rewrite that.
Belonging Begins where Silence Ends
Belonging isn’t a brochure. It’s built, day by day, with tiny acts of courage and care— from students, schools, and support systems. Here’s where I start when helping students rediscover their voice and agency:
Normalize Vulnerability
Every student deserves to say “this is hard” without feeling weak. In the workshops I run on identity and intercultural confidence, we begin by throwing perfection out the window. You’re allowed to ask, falter, clarify. You’re allowed to take your time. You are not too much. You are not too little. You are exactly enough.
Spot the Subtleties – Microaggressions Matter
A single offhand comment can echo for months. I remember a student who stopped speaking in class because of how someone reacted to the way they pronounced “Wednesday.” We unpack that together— not just the pain, but the pattern. We name what was unnamed.
Representation as Lifeline, Not Symbol
When you finally meet a teacher who looks like you, or a counsellor who gets your cultural shorthand, it doesn’t just feel nice. It feels safe. When I support schools in diversifying staff or training teachers in intercultural awareness, it’s not about ticking boxes. It’s about building trust at a gut level.
Reclaiming Identity, Not Erasing It
One student once told me, “I learned to make my identity smaller so people wouldn’t be uncomfortable.” In our coaching sessions, we flipped that narrative. Your story isn’t baggage—it’s brilliance. We mapped how to bring their full self into school life without apology.
Students shouldn’t have to disappear in order to belong. They shouldn’t need to become quieter, blander, easier, or “less different” to feel like they matter. The question isn’t just “How do I fit in?” It’s “How can I be fully myself and be fully included?”
And that’s a question we answer together—through listening, unlearning, and reimagining what school can feel like when it’s built for everyone.
The School’s Role: Going Beyond Lip Service
It’s not enough to include students. They need to feel invited. To be trusted with responsibility. To be reflected in the curriculum and the culture.
In past collaborations with international schools, I’ve seen firsthand how much changes when inclusion moves from the posters on the wall to the policies in the playbook:
• Update the Curriculum, Don’t Just Decorate It: It’s not enough to do a Diwali craft or a Black History Month slideshow. True inclusion means diversifying reading lists, decolonizing history, and asking, Whose stories are we leaving out?
• Train With Purpose: Teachers often don’t mean to exclude—but intention isn’t enough. That’s why I design tailored DEI trainings for faculty that go beyond theory, helping them reflect on the invisible norms shaping their teaching styles.
• Policies That Protect: If students don’t know where to go when something feels off—or if what’s “offensive” is still up for debate—then we haven’t built a safe school. Schools need policies that protect everyone, backed by clear reporting pathways and consistent follow-through.
The Parent’s Piece: Holding On and Letting Go
Parents, I see you. You’re navigating systems you didn’t grow up in, languages you don’t yet speak fluently, and expectations you never learned in your own childhood. You want your child to succeed, but you don’t want to lose your values in the process.
Here’s the truth: you don’t have to pick between fitting in and staying true to your roots.
In my work with intercultural families, this is one of the biggest tensions we unpack. Whether you’re an expat trying to understand and navigate a new country’s education system. or a multicultural couple wondering which holidays to prioritize— this stuff is deeply personal.
Some things that help:
• Stay Involved, Even When It’s Uncomfortable: Ask questions. Request meetings. You don’t need perfect grammar to advocate for your child.
• Name What Matters: Talk to your child about who they are and where they come from—not just in celebration, but in struggle. You’re not making it harder. You’re making it honest.
• Find Your People: Expat networks, local community centres, religious groups— whatever reminds you that you’re not the only one feeling this.
Sometimes families come to me overwhelmed by just how much there is to do—residency papers, school interviews, choosing a bilingual curriculum that doesn’t erase their culture. That’s where we dig in together and create a plan that’s actually doable. Because “integration” isn’t about assimilation. It’s about building bridges that go both ways.
Belonging Shouldn’t be a Luxury
Here’s the vision: A school where a kid in a headscarf is captain of the debate team. Where the student using a mobility aid is leading student council. Where a child who speaks four languages doesn’t have to “tone it down” to sound more “international.”
Belonging is not the end goal. It’s the starting line.
When we stop asking “how can they fit in?” and start asking “how can we make space?”—that’s when everything shifts.
And yes, this journey can be confusing, especially if you’re navigating it alone. That’s why I do what I do—not as a consultant in a suit, but as someone who’s walked these hallways, heard these stories, and built real-world strategies for students, families, and schools that want to go from surviving to thriving.
Final Thought
Being different should never mean being less. Whether you’re new to a country, a community, or navigating how to support a child who doesn’t feel like they belong— know this: your voice matters, and your story deserves space.
