Think about a student at your school who does everything right. Good grades. Always polite. Never any trouble. But something is missing, and you are not sure what.

From her perspective, would anyone even notice if she didn't come to school tomorrow? Would the day go on exactly the same without her? Too many students would say yes.

Researchers call this feeling mattering: the sense that you are significant to others. This goes beyond being cared for. Young people need to be needed, and as they grow up, they look for opportunities to help the people around them. But in most schools, we give students a lot and ask very little of them.

Feeling needed is a basic human need, like food or sleep. Students who feel needed work harder and feel better about their lives. Students who do not feel needed often stop trying and may give up on themselves.

No teacher wants students to feel this way. We want to protect children and prepare them for the future. But while we do that, the small jobs that once made young people useful have disappeared. Free time is filled with activities aimed at creating future opportunities. Phones take the hours students once spent helping friends and family. And the news shows them huge world problems they cannot solve, so they stop noticing the small needs next door.

Schools have answered the mental health crisis with more support. Very few have tried asking students to help someone else. 

So should we simply give students more jobs to do? It is not that simple. Mattering is a feeling that arises from an action, but only when the student knows how to process it. Students need to become literate in mattering. 

This is a practical course. We will look at what makes students feel needed, what gets in the way, how to build it into your school, how to help students see their own contribution, and how to measure whether it is working.