Dr. Sarah Bennison: How to Feel Like You Matter
"There is a disconnect now between what people value most in their hearts and society’s narrow definitions of success."
🎧 27 min | Episode 15 | Jun 13, 2024
Dr. Sarah Bennison
How to Feel Like You Matter
Our culture’s relentless emphasis on achievement is leaving many young people feeling socially disconnected. As a result, they question their significance and importance to others—in other words, how they matter. Dr. Sarah Bennison, a longtime educator and the founder of Trinity School's Office of Public Service in New York, is on a mission to change that.
Two years ago in Manhattan, a group of parents discussed the struggles their children faced to succeed. Among them were Sarah and Jennifer Breheny Wallace, author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic.
Sharing similar concerns, they launched The Mattering Movement, an organization that provides teachers and youth with toolkits, and soon a curriculum, offering tangible steps to build a sense of purpose through community ties.
“It’s nonstop pressure,” says Sarah. “Grind culture teaches us to buckle down and drill down.” Her words reflect our vernacular for communicating achievement. But think about it: "grind," "buckle," and "drill"—these are terms typically used to describe machinery. And yet, this is how we talk to kids.
Sarah’s initiative is shifting this narrative. By promoting self-worth and mattering, her work aims to create communities where people are not just achieving but thriving.
Listen Now
Transcript
(Edited slightly for clarity)
Melissa Ceria: Sarah Bennison, welcome.
Sarah Bennison: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
Melissa Ceria: Sarah, I'd like to start with the meeting that you attended two years ago, which initiated the Mattering Movement. What was the reason for the gathering and what was revealed during your conversation?
Sarah Bennison: So coming off work I had done at an independent school in New York called Trinity, a friend actually asked me if I would speak to a group of parents, essentially about how to engage families in meaningful social impact or community service work. And I have had over the years, many families come to me and say, I really want my kids to be involved in something meaningful, but struggling to find pathways to do that in kind of ongoing, meaningful ways. So, we gathered a group of friends at someone's apartment. It just so happened that the people that showed up happened to be experts across fields, a lot of highly accomplished, deeply committed people who are interested in shifting the focus of their children's lives from self advancement, credentialing and the pressure that they were feeling to something which felt more meaningful and really at the heart of the true values of these families, which is impacting the world in meaningful ways and finding a purpose beyond self advancement. So, I was talking to this small group, and Jennifer Wallace at that time was in the final stages of working on her book Never Enough. And so she and I immediately connected, coming at the same issues from different lenses.
-
Melissa Ceria [00:02:48] Why do you think our culture's relentless emphasis on achievement is leaving young people feeling socially disconnected?
Sarah Bennison [00:02:54] I think in my experience, what I have seen is that, and Jennifer writes about this in her book, is when kids are not relied on to add value in meaningful ways, and understanding that that impact and work is actually real and tangible, they get the message that their entire definition of success is contingent on their own performance. And this is what so many of our young people struggle with, because the way our social systems and the college process is set up is to basically put kids at the center of that and to make them responsible for the outcomes of their work. It's a very self-centered process in that way. If we can shift that to create an other mindset, what we have found is not only very powerful mental health outcomes, but also, ironically, researchers are now tracing higher achievement levels with kids who have a stronger sense of altruism, who have developed an other mindset and in our language have developed this strong sense of mattering, meaning that they understand that they are valued inherently at their core, regardless of external successes or failures. And, this is the critical piece, they are relied on to contribute to the world around them in meaningful ways. So our goal is to bring these ideas into schools and to work against the kind of dominant paradigms that rule a lot of schools right now, which is that kids need to get into a great college and in order to do that, it's all about their own self-focused self advancement and credentialing to get there.
Melissa Ceria [00:04:46] Mattering is, in fact, a psychological term. It's based on the three key components. Can you talk a little bit about its origin?
Sarah Bennison [00:04:53] So mattering actually there's a large body of scientific research going back to the 1980s. And there was a social psychologist named Maurice Rosenberg, who in the 1980s was studying self-esteem among high school students. And he was asking very similar questions to what scholars in more recent years have asked about teenagers and what Jenny writes about in her book, which is essentially, why are some kids able to navigate the pressures they're under and are less likely to struggle with mental health issues like anxiety, depression or loneliness? What differentiates those kids from the kids who really do suffer from lower rates of self-esteem and mental health issues? And Maurice Rosenberg initially was thinking about self-esteem. He created the first self-esteem scale, which still exists. But what he ended up finding, again, to what I was talking about earlier, is that the focus is not just about how a child feels about themselves internally, but it needs to go even deeper than that. And the component that makes it deeper has to do with contributing. So it's not enough just to feel that you're important for your own gifts or successes. But when you add value to the world around you, it creates this cycle of mattering. Because when you add value you are more, you are more likely to feel valued. And when you feel valued, you're more likely to add value.
Melissa Ceria [00:06:21] Can you explain how the Mattering Movement's toolkits sort of build on this sense of purpose in students concretely?
Sarah Bennison [00:06:28] So this is the other great thing about Mattering is that it's a very effective pathway because it's actionable, it's tangible, and with a few simple steps, you actually can increase mattering in your own life and for students and also for your own kids. One key idea is to make the implicit explicit. So, for example, most of us as parents, if you ask most parents, do your children know that they matter to you? The vast majority of parents will say, of course they do. When you ask kids that. Many kids report that either they only feel like they matter when they succeed or get good grades, for example, or get the lead in the school play or on the varsity team. Or they're not sure if they matter to their parents. So this is a key idea from Jenny's book, which is to make the implicit explicit. And scholars have studied this. So if you start to say simple things to your children like your worth never changes to me, regardless of successes or failures. And I used to always write notes to my kids. Our family motto is study hard and be kind to everyone, which we still use. But now I've added to that. Your worth never changes. I think this lesson is equally applicable for classroom teachers, who can take time to say to their students, your worth is not contingent on your performance here. Your worth never changes, regardless of the outcome.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:02] But let me ask you there seems to be a gap in perception here. You're saying parents know and expect their children to feel that they matter because they feel that way about them, and yet the children don't necessarily feel that in response. What's happening there?
Sarah Bennison [00:08:16] I think that what some of the anxiety we're seeing, thinking about parents and teachers is that there is a gap right now, or a disconnect between what people value most in their hearts at their core, and the systems and dominant paradigms that society tells us we have to navigate in order to fit into narrow definitions of success. And there's a very powerful example of this. In the course of creating this Office of Public Service at Trinity, I surveyed a lot of faculty, and some of the questions I asked them on this survey were, on a scale of 1 to 10, based on a series of questions, rate for me how much something values to you and how well your institution or school is doing. So some of the categories were developing empathy in students, developing a lifelong ethic of service, developing leadership qualities, developing what people call cross-cultural competencies. Can your students talk to different people? And interestingly, what I found was that there was actually an inverse correlation between what teachers said mattered the most to them, which 99% of teachers said was developing empathy in their students. The thing that mattered the least to teachers was developing leadership, in part because leadership for them implied a very self-advancement focused endeavor. And what they said the institution do the best is developing leaders. And what institutions are really struggling with is developing empathy in students. So you see there was this inverse correlation. That's the gap we're seeing. So when teachers show up for work every day, many of them feel that, viscerally, that they are called to teach, to create these values that are so deeply aligned with their own personal values. But they are working in systems not only in their school, but beyond that demand other kinds of areas of focus.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:11] So in these toolkits, what concretely are you offering? Is it a plan? Is it suggestions, prompts, activities? Can you tell us a little bit more about that.
Sarah Bennison [00:10:22] So we have toolkits for parents that are all structured around something to think about, where we break down some of this really robust research into bite sized pieces and then something to try. They offer 3 or 4 tangible things that you can do at home. A lot of the toolkits are based on research from Jenny's book. In addition to lessons that I have drawn from my work in education that we're bringing to parents at home. So they're meant to be bite-sized and very actionable. So we have a whole series of these toolkits.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:54] And it seems very sensible. But what are the challenges that you face in implementing these tools and programs?
Sarah Bennison [00:10:59] Well, right now our focus, so we have a lot of families signing up for our toolkits, which they do on their own at home. Our focus right now is schools, because we realized right from the get go that we've had teachers all over the world reaching out to us, asking for tools to bring to schools. We're in the midst of piloting our first of its kind Mattering curriculum with a very diverse group of 15 schools. So we're piloting with about 3500 students, 300 teachers, and we're gaining really important feedback through pre and post surveys. A couple of challenges in the school environment. One is time, because schools are under so much pressure for content and the day is only so many hours. Many schools, if they perceive this as an add on, think this is going to be too hard. We use the word curriculum, but actually Mattering is really a framework or a lens that you can apply to anything you're teaching. And what we've found in our surveys is when we ask them, is Mattering something that you could incorporate into other classes you're teaching 93% say yes. And because people haven't heard about mattering, sometimes they're a little skeptical at first because there are a lot of trends in education that come and go, but because we have this large body of scientific research and we're very science-based, we're really drawing on all of these experts, and we have incredible academic advisors who are working with us.
Melissa Ceria [00:12:21] Does this mean that you need to go into the schools and talk to educators, and if so, what is their reaction?
Sarah Bennison [00:12:27] Yes. So I'm talking to a lot of educators, administrators and teachers all over the United States. We're even piloting with a school right now in Jordan, in the Middle East. About a month ago, we spent a day at three of our pilot schools. And I have to say, there's a ton of enthusiasm, excitement, and receptivity to what we're doing. I think that educators are really seeking tangible tools and agree with us that mattering is a very accessible framework, not only for teachers and students, but also for parents. And they see it also as a way of connecting with families, because many schools that we talked to are experiencing a real breakdown in the levels of trust, communication and relationships with families. So it's one thing to do that, to do this at school, but we need this to carry through to home. So we see it as a very reparative thing as well.
Melissa Ceria [00:13:20] You mentioned Jordan. So are you observing this similar trend in other countries as well?
Sarah Bennison [00:13:25] In our limited data so far, yes. And we've been talking to people in the UK and Jenny's actually writing her next book on adult mattering, and that's international in scope.
Melissa Ceria [00:13:35] I want to talk about community service and self-worth, which is something that you really advocate for because you have been focused on this for so many years as an educator, and I should add that you have worked in different schools across New York City. What do students learn about themselves through community service and helping others that they don't necessarily learn in the classroom?
Sarah Bennison [00:13:57] Well, one of the things people don't usually think about when they think about community service is the critical leadership skills that work like this fosters. But I've always thought about groups of kids that I have led through this work as a leadership incubator, and that kids learn through this kind of work, things that they don't necessarily learn in the classroom, on the sports field, in other areas of their school life. One of those key things is what I referenced before cross-cultural competencies. And one of my mentors, the late doctor Paul Farmer, talks about cross-cultural empathy, which is actually even a better term. But the idea is, where do our kids learn this 21st century critical leadership skill of talking to all kinds of people that they don't know? And again, when you're in one school and the end game is the college process, and you are aiming toward that and it's about your self advancement, you don't often have opportunities to leave your comfort zone, to go into different areas and talk to different kinds of people and to learn from them and what that means. So if you look at a list of 21st century leadership skills, almost every single one of them aligns very deeply with the critical skills kids learn when they are doing service learning, or community, or social impact work.
Melissa Ceria [00:15:16] You bring up a really good point because so much of the messaging around community service is about something that kids need to do so that they can incorporate this as part of their narrative when they're applying to college. It has not been presented that often as purely something that is enriching for them. Are you trying to change that perception as well?
Sarah Bennison [00:15:38] Yeah. So for example, many schools have requirements for community service, which I think can be a very good thing, their arguments on both sides. Personally, I chose at Trinity, for example, not to require community service, but instead to create a grassroots social movement where we were setting kids up for success and scaffolding opportunities for them to engage in meaningful ways. Because of the unique location of that school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there is a lot in proximity where kids could leave during free periods, work in meaningful ways on a weekly basis at 15 community-based organizations, and incorporate that as part of their school life. I know most schools don't have that, but I do think that understanding the way that service intersects with these other really important 21st century skills and skills our kids are going to need, whether they're running a board meeting, working in finance, working in a non-for-profit, teaching a class, whatever those are. You know, you learned so much from this kind of meaningful work to positively impact the world.
Melissa Ceria [00:16:44] The program's mission is to help students know themselves in the world, and, as you describe it, "mattering in action". The importance of action is central to this because it's not just theoretical, right?
Sarah Bennison [00:16:55] Yes, absolutely. And I should say, people often have the assumption when you say social impact, that impact has to be a huge thing.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:06] Right. And it doesn't necessarily have to be.
Sarah Bennison [00:17:08] No, the research actually shows that whether you do something small, like send a nice note to a friend who's having a hard time, or you try to do something bigger, that the first of all, the mental health benefits are the same for the person doing the action and the recipient, and also that small actions have a ripple effect that lead to meaningful change. So we're really trying to shift that as well.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:32] I'm curious, when students are caring for siblings after school or working to contribute financially, for example, are they also grappling with this same question of mattering?
Sarah Bennison [00:17:42] The more kids are relied on to contribute, research shows that the stronger their sense of mattering. Now, kids don't always realize that. So one of the things that we're working to do is to put language around what's happening. We've actually had teachers and kids come to us to say, you know what it feels like when you matter. You get this warm feeling when someone even calls and asks you for help, but you may not have language around that. We need to teach kids this is what's happening here. And even if it feels hard to you that there are profound benefits to that, we really want to put language to what's happening.
Melissa Ceria [00:18:20] There is such an achievement culture in well, it's impossible to ignore the effects of social media. In addition to seeing more kids living behind their screens, we're witnessing higher levels of anxiety from comparison. And in her book, Jennifer does write about this, and she says, and I quote, "social comparison is a natural part of being human, but left unchecked, it can make us deeply lonely. Envy diminishes one's sense of mattering." I imagine that the Mattering Movement is also rubbing up against this.
Sarah Bennison [00:18:52] Yes, definitely. And Jenny writes very eloquently also about how to turn envy into support for peers. Again, these are skills that we need to teach kids and put language around it. And of course, Jonathan Haidt is really offering a very compelling argument and research around the harms of social media. That's, of course, one huge factor that families are facing.
Melissa Ceria [00:19:20] You mentioned Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, which I have been reading as well. And in fact, right at the beginning, he talks about that rising parental fearfulness and over protection in the 1990s, has now also led to how smartphones, along with over protection, acted like experience blockers. That's such a great term, you know, are we holding our children back from going out into the world, which in fact is a practical experience where mattering really does happen and it anchors them in those values?
Sarah Bennison [00:19:53] Yes. And from the lens of education, experiential learning, research shows that is when kids internalize what they're learning, through experiencing it. All of us have had the, you know, experience in school of cramming for a test, taking the test, and then you're asked six months later what was on the test, and you can't remember. And that's, you know, that's what Jonathan Height's writing about also, in terms of relationships in face to face relationships are never going to be the same as social media relationships or even texting. Because schools and educators feel so pressed for time because of the content pressure, often the perception is that there isn't time for experiential learning. But again, this is where I think service learning also fills a great need in schools, because if you can create a meaningful service learning program with opportunities for kids, that is by nature experiential.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:42] And Sarah, I mean, this also just places a lot of responsibility on the schools, as parents, surely, you know, there are things that we can do to support this. One of the things that comes to mind is just how incredibly overscheduled our children are. And those schedules are often set up by parents, at least in the early years. Is this something that also needs to be revisited?
Sarah Bennison [00:21:06] Yes. And, and Jenny speaks to that also in very powerful ways and the language she uses that we need to set up guardrails for our children. And I would add to that that not only do parents need to do that, but schools need to step up and do that, too. And I know that many schools try to limit the number of AP courses a child can take, to limit the number of courses in general. But again, because of the college process, there's a lot of pressure around this. But we show our kids that they matter when we, as parents and educators teach them about how to live a healthy, happy life. And that not only includes over scheduling all this kind of self advancement stuff, it also includes having meaningful family time, being a good friend, all these kinds of relationships. And I know that there are parents who will listen to this, to say that all sounds great, that we don't have time. But, you know, one simple thing that I've learned and I've started doing it at home is I used to say to myself, I'm not going to ask my kids to set the table or put the dishes in the dishwasher tonight because they have too much homework. They're too busy to help out. And now that I understand mattering, I realize that if they take 5 or 10 minutes to help with these simple tasks, it will give them actually a neurological boost that's going to energize them to get their homework done in a more effective way.
Melissa Ceria [00:22:21] And what about the concept that it's also just helpful to help you?
Sarah Bennison [00:22:26] Yeah, exactly. It also is a reminder that I matter. Right? Because you're showing your kids that we're a community, we're a team, we need to all work together.
Melissa Ceria [00:22:36] I want to talk a little bit about language that is used to describe achievement. I touched on this earlier. Words like grind, buckle down, drill down. It's harsh and it's relentless. How have we gotten to this point?
Sarah Bennison [00:22:50] Yeah. Well, you know, I think as I've been talking so much about the larger systems that are shaping, including macroeconomic systems that make going to the right a good college feel like a zero sum game. You know, families are under a tremendous amount of pressure. And unfortunately, a lot of this does fall on kids because it's their success that becomes the center, you know, kind of solving for the insecurity in many ways that families are feeling. But I do think if you look at the history of education going back to the late 19th century, you will see that there are cycles and there have been moments of great change. So if you think about the beginning of the progressive education movement in the early 20th century, where we went from a factory kind of teacher-centric model of education to a child-centric model with smaller class sizes, recognizing social emotional learning, things like that. There is precedent for change, and I think we're at the precipice of another movement for change. And we see this across sectors, including, you know, Jonathan Height's book, what Jenny's writing about achievement culture. There is so much traction around these ideas, and I think people are looking for solutions.
Melissa Ceria [00:24:04] That sounds encouraging and I would love to see that. I'm just wondering, in a world that is accelerating exponentially, is there an alternative language and what narratives do you suggest to foster this healthier approach to achievement?
Sarah Bennison [00:24:19] I mean, first, I should be very clear that we are not anti-achievement. So the Mattering Movement is full of high-achieving people who care a lot about healthy ways of achieving. We definitely don't want to send the message that, it's, this is mutually exclusive, that either you're an achiever or you care about your mental health, social-emotional health. There are ways of learning, again, I think that part of it is that, these are skills that kids, teachers and parents can learn to reframe, even if your behavior doesn't change that much, to reframe the way that we're talking and understanding what we're doing.
Melissa Ceria [00:25:01] It's interesting that the origin of the word matter comes from the Latin word materia, which means substance. Do you think that mattering is about seeking substance?
Sarah Bennison [00:25:11] Yes, I think that's actually. No one has ever asked me that. But I think that's a great way of thinking about it. I think that the term substance actually begs the question to each individual person. What is substantive to you? Because most people, if you ask them that, know the answer. And I think that the answers are very common and connect all of us. You can probably think of some just off the top of your head. So if we can try and get back to those things in some meaningful way, and ground ourselves in what matters most to us, I think that it's a great first step.
Melissa Ceria [00:25:49] And so what is your long term vision for the Mattering Movement?
Sarah Bennison [00:25:53] We have a longer term vision for the curriculum that we will be rolling out over time. And we also have much bigger ideas for the Mattering Movement longer term, focusing on phases of life. There are phases of life where people are especially vulnerable to low levels of mattering. One of those are teenagers. The second are people in midlife. People like me who are about to be empty nesters, and then retirement-age people. There's a real need in that community also.
Melissa Ceria [00:26:23] I will say that I did take the mattering test on your website. Apparently my level is high right now, so I was, I was very pleased about that, especially given the fact that I'm in this midlife moment. So I'm rather encouraged by what you just said. But of course, that can change. And it is a reminder, I think, that it is not consistent throughout our lives. There are moments where we feel this more or less strongly, but having awareness around this, making sure that we tap into activities, communities that reinforce this sense is healthy for us. I think that it improves our sense of social connections, our mental health, certainly, cultural awareness and our sense of purpose, which at the end of the day, matters. And so I want to thank you so much, Sarah, for talking about this. It gives us so much to think about. I wish you all the best as you continue this work.
Sarah Bennison [00:27:15] Well, thank you so much, Melissa. This has been such a pleasure to speak to you and also just means so much to us.
Melissa Ceria [00:27:22] Thank you so much, Sarah.
Explore More
Instagram: @matteringmovement
Website: Mattering Movement