Strong and Belong: Building and Piloting a Single‐Session Universal Social Belongingness Program for First‐Year High School Students

ABSTRACT Low social belongingness and high psychological distress among adolescents are at all‐time highs. The transition to ninth grade marks the beginning of high school and provides a unique window of both opportunity and vulnerability for low social belongingness and negative mental health outcomes. To build and sustain social contexts that encourage adaptive social belongingness, schools need universal programming that can be embedded, tailored, and sustained within their schools. The current project outlines a proof‐of‐concept single session program, Strong and Belong, developed through an academic‐school partnership and piloted with 327 ninth‐grade students over 3 years. The program, delivered by classroom teachers, utilized prerecorded content that included psychoeducation about belongingness, personal belongingness stories adapted from real high school students, and personal video narratives from current school staff about their own high school belongingness experiences. Participants then engaged in two self‐reflection writing prompts designed to foster a growth mindset of belongingness. Program evaluation results indicated strong student engagement as evidenced by the percentage of students who were able to accurately follow writing prompt directions—a primary candidate mechanism of change within growth mindset programs. Additionally, while not available in Years 1 and 3 due to COVID‐19 restrictions, Year 2 program evaluation data indicated some impacts on social connection and help‐seeking behavior. While further evaluation is needed, this proof‐of‐concept project provides an adaptable template for a brief Tier 1 intervention that may foster growth mindsets of belongingness among ninth‐grade students within a high school setting.